


A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

by crossingwinter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Oddly enough Endgame Sansa/Edric Dayne, Other, TW for Past Sexual Violence, drabbleverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2018-01-23 23:37:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 64,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1583576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summertimes are never as restful as they are supposed to be.  And it feels like this summer, everything that could go wrong does go wrong.  </p><p>Formerly titled Drabbleverse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Old Summary: Drabbleverse is a set of drabbles that all take place in the same verse. Yes, I know, pretty obvious. But it gets more complicated.
> 
> I have no say in what the prompts will be. They are sent in at designated times by those who feel like submitting prompts. As such, there is no “plot trajectory” that I’m planning, and for all I know, rocks may fall and everyone may die tomorrow. So it’s a longform experience of writing without a plan. My goal, ultimately, is that there will be a plot. I have kind of gotten one started, but I won’t be pushing that plot unless there’s the opportunity for it.
> 
> It could all crash and burn real fast. It could also be amazing.
> 
> At this point, I think it's safe to say that the story centers, by and large, around Arya and Sansa. 
> 
> \--
> 
> There will be a note at the beginning of each chapter indicating who will appear.
> 
> \--
> 
> You can also read this in a different format at [Drabbleverse](http://drabbleverse.tumblr.com).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ned, Cat, Brienne, Sansa, Stannis, Melisandre, Oberyn, Willas, Bran, Jojen, Sandor, Grey Worm, Missandei, Podrick, Tyrion, Cersei, Jaime, Arya, Gendry

It’s hard feeling like control has been blasted to smithereens.  Not the hardest, of course, but harder than Catelyn could have dreamed, given everything that was happening.  

She’d prided herself for years now on a perfect family, a happy one.  It had never been easy, of course—Arya and Rickon dickering about their collection of baseball cards, Robb and the Greyjoy boy getting into all sorts of trouble at school—but she’d been able to manage it, her and Ned together.  And now…

Things were falling apart.  And maybe they had been for a while, or maybe it was a window being smashed and glass shattering in your face.  But Catelyn was out of control now, and she didn’t know if she’d get it back.

"Relax, Cat.  It will be all right," he said.

She glanced over at Ned.  He was sitting stiffly in his chair, staring blankly at the pages of some magazine.  Those large grey eyes weren’t moving,  weren’t doing anything except staring at a big advertisement for  _Bolton’s_.  She could tell from the way his shoulders hunched that he hated it too, hated this whole thing, hated everything that brought them there, and, like her, hated waiting worst of all.  He, like her, was further from relaxed than he’d ever been in his life.

Her father had once said that there were two stages of parenthood: the stage that came with having a child for the first time and knowing that your life would never be the same; and the stage that came when your child was grown, when your child was no longer a child, but a full grown person making their own decisions, and you no longer had any say in it…

She felt her eyes pricking and looked down at her hands.

*

There were some people who came into her office and just looked  _broken_  and it made Brienne sad.

Sansa Stark was one of those people.

There were dark circles under her eyes—bright blue eyes, like her mother’s, Brienne noted—lips pinched nervously and a pallor that didn’t seem healthy.

Sansa sat quietly, staring at her hands clutched in her lap.  She picked at a hangnail on her thumb, and seemed to compress in on herself, her legs together, her shoulders hunched her head bowed.

"So," Brienne uncapped her pen.  "Sansa."  Sansa didn’t look up, but she stopped picking at the hangnail for a moment.  "Where do you want to begin?"

Sansa didn’t say a word, and Brienne heard a quivering in the room, a quiet shudder and suddenly the girl was crying, her body curving even further down over her lap, great gulping sobs erupting from her.  

Brienne put the pad and paper down on her table and reached out to take Sansa’s hand.  ”We’ll make it better,” she murmured as Sansa squeezed.  ”We’ll make it better.”

*

He had heard enough sermons in his life to know what sin was. He had sat through church every Sunday for over twenty years now, listening to pastors advising their herds how to live their lives, threatening the fires of hell of you lived a life of sin.

He knew that there was a difference between a single sin and a life of sin, he knew that God did not damn people lightly, but he hadn’t realized how little he cared about sin until he met her.

She had joined their church two years before, sitting in the front pew in a scarlet dress—scarlet to match her scarlet hair, and singing hymns louder than the rest of the congregation combined in an alto voice so low sometimes she sang the tenor parts. What a mystery she was, with skin pale like the moon (how could skin even be that pale?) and lips painted blood red at the grocery store, at the coffee shop, even at church.

He’d been the one to convince Selyse to invite her over for dinner. “As head of the congregation,” he had said, even though Selyse had muttered about that “scarlet woman” for over a month after she had joined.

In the end, Selyse had adored Melisandre (Melisandre. The name even sounded musical, exotic) and their first dinner had turned into weekly dinners, trips to the movies, and the odd escapade at a local bar.

And that was how he learned what sin was. Sin was something that ate away at your soul, dragged you down into agonizing obsession, all because you experienced the one kind of temptation you never expected to.

*

Willas had never been to Paris. It had never even been on his list. He had taken German in school, and there had always been something unappealingly snooty about France in his mind.

And yet, here he was, struggling with his bag in Charles De Gaulle airport, and wishing he had a good enough grasp on French to spring for a cab to the cinquième arrondissement. Hell, he didn’t even know how to pronounce cinquième arrondissement. Margaery had made noises when she’d tried to teach him baby French. (“It’s the vowels that make it hard, mon frère. Especially since you can already do the r already because of your German.”)

His bag got stuck in the turnstile that would let him through to the RER into North Station. He began muttering curses under his breath about France, and how just because they thought they had invented liberty, fraternity, and equality didn’t mean they knew how to make good turnstiles.

"Puis-je vous aider?" came a voice. He looked up. The man had a silver streak in his hair and a bemused expression on his face.

"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" Willas tried.

The man shook his head and replied, “Español?”

Willas grimaced. “English?”

The man grinned, “Why didn’t you try English first? Everyone speaks English.” He had a Spanish lilt to his British English, a combination that Willas had never heard before and which sounded thoroughly…exotic?  Exotic was pejorative, wasn’t it?

"I have heard that it isn’t always wise admitting that I’m American in Europe."

"Well, that’s remarkably stupid. No one cares about that so long as you aren’t an asshole tourist. You’re not an asshole tourist, are you?"

"No. I’m a Professor," said Willas, somewhat chagrined.

"You’ll be fine!"  The man snorted suddenly, as though at his own private joke.  Willas cocked his head.  "Sorry.  You’ll be fine.  Especially in Paris, where the cult of the university rivals the cult of Catholicism.  Where are you teaching Professor…"

"Tyrell.  Willas Tyrell."

"Oberyn Martell," smiled the man.

"I’m a guest lecturer at ENS this term."

"A  _good_  Professor then,” Oberyn nodded approvingly.  ”Well, let me help you with your bag, Professor.  I wouldn’t want you tripping down the stairs.”

*

"I think my sisters are going insane," Bran whispered. They were lying on the dock, him and Jojen and Meera, letting the summer sun wash over them. There was nothing to worry about—at least in the school sense. Bran had finished his term paper a week before, a full month before he was expected to have done. "Take your time," Professor Luwin had said. "Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you are recovering from severe physical trauma." The problem, of course now there wasn’t anything else for him to do with his time.

"What makes you say that?" Meera asked. Her tone was calm, and he knew it was the kind of tone that came from hers and Jojen’s pact that they would do all they could to get his mind off his legs.

"I dunno. It’s just how it is, you know?"

But they didn’t know. That was the problem. They helped as best they could, guiding him out of his chair so that he could lie on the dock with him, or grabbing his phone charger out of his bag for him, or, on occasion, carrying his chair between the two of them because asshole architects didn’t know what wheelchair accessible meant. But helping wasn’t always helpful.

Jojen reached for his hand and squeezed it. “You would be worried about your sisters when you can’t walk ever again.” Or maybe Jojen hadn’t gotten Meera’s memo. But even now, he was trying to tease, but Bran couldn’t smile.

Sansa was seeing a therapist three times a week and Arya had this deadened look in her eyes. It scared him—it scared him worse than never being able to walk again.

*

At night, she still heard it when she was trying to fall asleep.  Harsh words, shouting, fists against her stomach, her knees hitting every step as she falls.  It was hard to fall asleep, no matter how exhausted she felt.

She came home from therapy completely drained.  More drained than she knew she could feel.  Brienne was so calm the entire time, so patient when Sansa couldn’t say words at all, when tears streamed down her face.

"Don’t feel bad about crying.  Crying is good.  Cry to me, Sansa.  Tears actually release a stress hormone from your body, so you’ll feel relaxed afterwards," Brienne had said, her face carefully neutral as she handed Sansa a new box of tissues.

Maybe that was why she’d always felt better crying.  Maybe that was why, when they’d been in Pennsylvania and Joffrey had been out of the room…

_"Can you hear me?  Open up this door at once or else I’ll have the hound break it down!" Joffrey shouts, disgust and rage in his voice.  "I’m warning you, Sansa!"_

_She just bites her pillow and a moment later hears the crunch of shattering wood.  ”Dog—get her out of there,” Joff orders.  She grabs the bedframe—she won’t, she_ won’t.   _The mattress dips next to her and she knows he’s about to drag her out._ _  
_

_"Come on little bird," he whispers, and she knows Joff can’t hear.  Joff probably thinks he’s muttering threats in her ear.  "Don’t make me do this."_

_She’s still for a moment.  He’s always gentle when there are people around and harsh when they’re alone and she hates it because she hates feeling confused, but she can’t bear the idea of him being harsh now._

_She hiccups, and sits up, not looking at him, vowing that she wouldn’t cry again—not in front of any of them._

*

"Come on, Grey, let’s at least go for a walk."

He kept staring at the ceiling.  She couldn’t even hear him breathing, and if it weren’t for the obvious way he blinked, she wouldn’t know he was even alive.

"You have to get out of the house at some point.  And it’s so lovely out."  Missandei leaned against the door frame, hoping that this time Grey would get up.  He had threatened to leave a few days before, because he felt like he was a burden, but he hadn’t.  He didn’t have anywhere else to go.

"Maybe tomorrow," he muttered at last, and turned his head away from her.

"We could get ice cream," she tried.

He didn’t say a word.  She sighed heavily.  ”Don’t forget to take your hormones.”

He grunted in acknowledgement and she left his room, closing the door quietly behind her.  

She grabbed at Mossador’s dog tags around her neck as she went down stairs, biting her lip and trying not to cry.  

*

It had to be some kind of cruel joke—some kind of very,  _very_  cruel joke. 

He’d only gotten hotter, hadn’t he—as he’d gotten older.  His hair was curlier, and a darker red than it had been when she’d been too shy to talk to him, and there were laugh lines around his lips and crinkles around his blue eyes, and  _oh god he just had to get hotter, didn’t he?_

This was going to be bad—so very bad.  You weren’t supposed to have vestiges of a girlhood crush on your boss, you really,  _really_  weren’t.  You were supposed to be smart, witty, driven—an asset to the team, not someone who was positively drooling when he smiled and she caught a glimpse of his canine teeth.

"Before we get going," said Doran, "I just wanted to make sure you’re all introduced to Robb Stark, who is joining us from the San Jose office.  Robb, your team is Wylla, Alleras, and Myrcella."  

There was a flicker of astonished recognition in Robb’s eyes, and—oh god, he definitely gave her a one over, oh god he was amazed that little Cella had grown up, wasn’t he?

Doran wave to them all, then wheeled himself away.  Alleras was already staring at his screen again, zooming into rework some calculations on CAD and Wylla was asking Robb how the shift back to the East Coast was going.

Myrcella waited patiently for Wylla to be done.  when she returned to her computer, Robb came over, his eyes still wide and still so  _damn blue_.  

"This is a surprise," he grinned.

"Hi," she replied, doing her best not to feel like she was fourteen and stunned through her braces again.

"Good to see you Cella.  I’m looking forward to working with you."

_Oh god this would be the worst._

*

He’d found her in the rain, sitting on a bench without an umbrella.  He almost hadn’t recognized her, except that how could he  _not_  recognize her.  She was Sansa, of course she was Sansa, sitting there in the park just staring as though she couldn’t see anything at all.  

He hadn’t known what to say, didn’t know if he should approach her, so he didn’t.  He remembered what had happened when they had found Arya, how she’d struggled and fought and how approaching her had almost made everything worse.

So he had pulled out his cell phone and held it in his hand for a minute before dialing Mrs. Stark’s number.

He watched Sansa until Mr. and Mrs. Stark arrived and ushered her into their car, Mrs. Stark sobbing and kissing Sansa’s temple.  They didn’t see him standing under the old apple tree that he’d climbed every day of summer when he was eight.  It didn’t surprise him.  Somehow no one ever seemed to see him.  But that was all right.  He watched quietly from the distance, knowing that it would always pay off.

*

She always wore red. Before they had become friends, he had heard Selyse jabbering into the phone about how red was such a sinful color, and that a godly woman would never wear red and only red.

"It’s a joyful color, really," Melisandre had said over dinner when she had first come over, "Full of life. That’s what I learned on my mission trips."

The mention of missionary work convinced Selyse, who wanted to hear everything about Melisandre’s travels. Melisandre had been everywhere, it seemed, spreading the gospel in Africa and Asia. Selyse had never been further away than Long Island, and hearing about hidden churches in Beijing basements was enough to make his wife clasp at her breast in excitement.

"Red is a lucky color," Melisandre had explained. "And I have found that wearing red means that people listen to me more. It is such a familiar color for them."

Perhaps red was a lucky color, perhaps it was familiar or friendly, but red was her and she was captivating.

*

"I don’t see how any of this is my responsibility," sighed Tyrion into the phone.

"You’re the one who went to law school," snapped Cersei.  "Fix it, Tyrion."

"I’m afraid I can’t change the past, Cersei, and I sure as hell can’t make it disappear.  It’s not my fault that Joffrey—"

"Joffrey didn’t—"

"Joffrey  _di_ _d_ , Cersei, and the sooner you wrap your head around that, the easier it will be for me to fix it.  No judge in the country is going to let him get away with what he did to Sansa Stark.  Not a one.  Best count yourself lucky that all the other shit he pulled hasn’t come up yet.”

"There isn’t other—"

"I’m short, Cersei.  Not Stupid.  Look, I’ll see if I can get the Starks to settle out of court.  I’ll do my best.  But that’s not fixing the problem.  That’s not even beginning to fix the problem."  He hung up the phone.

Fuck everything—was he really going to try and defend his shit of a nephew?  Was he really trying to deny the Starks their justice?  That poor girl…

*

She’d always been beautiful—always.  Beautiful smiling, beautiful laughing, beautiful sitting in a corner watching television and pretending that Robert wasn’t in the next room over, belligerently drunk on the phone with Ned Stark.  

Jaime liked the angry beauty best, though, fire in her face, color rising on her cheeks, her lips red and wet as she sucked them into her mouth while preparing her next argument.  

Cersei threw her cell phone across the room and it knocked over the photograph of Robert and Tommen and Myrcella at the beach, grinning broadly and sunscreen on their noses.  ”That little monster won’t help Joff,” she snapped.  Jaime raised his eyebrows at her.  ”Oh, don’t try and tell me not to call him that.  He won’t help his  _nephew_.  How is that not monstrous?”

"Well, to be fair, Joffrey committed several felonies.  You can’t blame Tyrion for wanting to uphold the moral standard of our—"

Cersei glared at him, here green eyes flashing fire and he felt his heart quicken in his throat.  ”That’s  _not_  why he’s doing anything.  He doesn’t give a  _shit_  about the moral standard of society. He’s doing this  _to me_.”

"I actually think he’s doing it to Joffrey," Jaime said, laughing.  Cersei narrowed her eyes at him.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she demanded.  "Joffrey is," she lowered her voice " _our_  son.” _  
_

"I seem to recall something of that, yes," Jaime replied coolly.  Then he sighed and reached out to her, running his hand down the side of her arm.  She closed her eyes beneath his touch.  "There’s only so much we can do to protect him, now.  He’s a grown man—capable of making his own choices and mistakes, Cersei, and—"

"Does that mean we don’t even try though?" There was desperation in her voice, and he saw tears in her bright green eyes.  "He’s my  _boy_ , Jaime.  Father would do anything for you—why can’t you—” she paused, breathing heavily.  Then she turned away from him.  

He wouldn’t do anything for Joffrey—he couldn’t.  But Cersei…

He wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed a kiss to the side of her neck, holding her as close as he could, feeling her warmth sink into him through his shirt.

He’d kill for Cersei if he had to.  

*

She hadn’t seen him since the fire, when he’d grabbed hold of her, so hard that there had been bruises on her arms. He had been crying and shouting, spittle flying from his mouth and tears dripping from her face as he’d told her to run, because if she didn’t run, she’d be all on her own because he was getting the fuck out of there as fast as he could he was done with all of it—done, and if he was gone who the fuck would take care of her then?

That was what had confused her the most—that he had said he had taken care of her. They all said that they had taken care of her, Joffrey, Cersei, Tyrion, and now the Hound, even though he had hardly been there at all, because he had left right when things were getting bad. But none of them had taken care of her, not a one. And if they had, if any of them had…maybe it wouldn’t be this way now, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to smile, maybe she would believe that there was some good left in the world…

But no.

That was wrong.

Because the world wasn’t an inherently bad place, it was just filled with horrible people who did horrible things and did their best to cloud the beauty and goodness that there was in it, in themselves, in everyone else…

Maybe that was what was most confusing. Because when she saw his face half melted off and his tears glistening from the flames all around them, she didn’t see the cruel words or the aggressive actions, or even the unwanted attention, she saw a terrified little boy whose brother had shoved his face in the fire.

*

Gendry jumped up and grabbed hold of the thick branch that hung just over his head.  He tugged his chin up so that it was level to the top of the branch, then swung his leg so that it hooked over the top, allowing him to clamber up.  His hands were raw, but he didn’t care. He scooted over a bit, then lugged himself up onto the next branch, then the next, then the next.

Her window was just a little too far out of reach for him to feel comfortable knocking, but what the hell did it matter?  What would she care if he broke his neck? 

She looked up when he knocked, grey eyes wide with shock.  She crossed the room, and pushed the window up. 

“You are going to fall and die,” she snapped.

“Yeah, well.  You weren’t picking up your phone. Will you move so that I can come in?”

“Then you’ll  _really_  fall and die,” she muttered.

“Only if you don’t move.”

“Asshole.”

For one moment, he thought he  _would_  fall and die, and then he’d never be able to live it down, but he didn’t.  He did land rather awkwardly though, and thought he might have twisted his ankle, but didn’t let it on.

Arya stood back from him, her face unreadable.

“Good to see you too,” he said dryly.

“What are you doing here?”

“You weren’t picking up your phone.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to talk to you did I?” she snapped.  She crossed the room and threw herself into a desk chair.  It was a nice desk chair, one of those ones in fancy offices made of mesh that were supposed to be good for your back.  Gendry sat on the floor.

“Where  _were_ you?” he asked at last.

“Away,” she said.

“I got that much,” he replied, rolling his eyes.

“You don’t want to know where I was,” she muttered.

“I do actually.  That’s why I’m asking.”

“No—Gendry—I mean you don’t want to know where I was.” Her voice was dark and for a minute, she looked dangerous with blank, unfamiliar eyes that came out of that face…it was a thinner face now, and it had been thin before.  Her eyes were sunken, and there were dark circles around them, and she was pale—so pale.

“So when you say you didn’t want to talk to me…” he muttered.

“I meant you didn’t want to talk to me.”. 

Arya would have bit her lip, Arya would have rolled her eyes, or stuck out her tongue.

He had no idea who this girl was anymore.

*

“And you don’t dream.”

“No.  I don’t.”

“See, I think you’re lying.”

Brienne saw Sansa bite back the shadow of a smile and look at her hands again. 

“So you do dream,” she pressed.

“Yes.”

“What about?”

“Things.”

“Sansa—” Brienne said, trying not to sound exasperated.

“I’m not trying to be evasive,” Sansa replied, still staring at her hands.  The smile was gone now.  “It’s…it’s hard to place them, you know.  Sometimes…sometimes I wonder if they’re dreams at all, or if they’re just memories cropping up, you know?”

“Well, those work too,” Brienne said dryly, and Sansa let out a voiceless, humorless laugh.  “Just one, Sansa.  One step at a time, one dream, or memory, or whatever they are.”

Sansa opened her mouth, and looked very like Alinore had when she would make to dive off the dock back home when they’d been little and Alinore, Sandor, and Gregor had all come to visit.  It was a nervous face—the face of someone who wants to dive in smoothly, feel the cleansing rush of cool lake water, and not the horrible sting when skin slaps the surface in a burning belly-flop.

“There’s one that keeps coming back,” she said so quietly that Brienne had to lean forward to really hear it.  “There’s one where…where….” Sansa licked her lips and looked at Brienne with panicked eyes.  “He’s…trying to break my arm.  He’s pressing it, pressing my arm against the doorjamb and it’s not breaking, my bone isn’t breaking but it’s hurting and the skin is pinching and he’s just laughing, and telling Meryn not to stop and—”

“Meryn’s the one pushing your arm?”

“Yes.  Joffrey’s making him.”

“What wakes you up?”

“Usually my bone snapping through my skin,” Sansa said, her face is blank, her eyes dead.

“Did they ever actually break your bone?”

“No.  No.  The Hound always got them to stop somehow.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cersei, Jaime, Elia, Lyanna, Sansa, Podrick, Roose, Walda, Domeric, Ramsay, Grey Worm, Missandei, Oberyn, Arianne, Stannis, Melisandre, Jeyne, Theon, Renly, Loras, Robb, Myrcella, Tyrion, Edmure, Roslin, Rickon, Tywin, Sandor, Arya

Jaime had always been a part of her.  Even if she tried, she couldn’t imagine life without him.

The only times that Cersei truly knew peace was when she lay in bed with Jaime, his cock going limp inside her after they’d both come apart together—together.  Always together, because if they weren’t together the world didn’t matter.  For a second, a minute, an hour, they were alone in the world and nothing else mattered at all.   Just them—entwined in the shitty cotton sheets of Jaime’s bed.

She’d tried to buy him better sheets with a higher thread count.  She had—but he hadn’t ever used them.  They had just remained unopened in his dresser until he donated them to charity.  He said he slept better in the ones he had, whatever that meant.

Jaime was her solace.  Just a moment of his lips against hers, of his hands at her tits, his cock thrusting in and out and in and out and in and out could let her forget everything—Robert’s idiocies, Father’s cruel words, Joffrey’s wildness.  For just a moment, she could only think of Jaime, his green eyes, his full lips, his blonde curls, sweaty and wild from her fingers.

*

Elia liked it when they said that her marriage to Rhaegar was for the green card.  She liked that very much, and smiled when she saw it on people’s eyes.  Because, that wasn’t all she’d gotten out of Rhaegar.  She’d gotten two children and a girlfriend as well.

She’d been young when she’d met Rhaegar—too young.  Young when she’d given him a daughter, and then a son, young when their marriage was falling apart and he had suggested bringing someone into it. “Non-conventional can work,” he’d said quietly, looking at the tips of his fingers, pressed together on the tabletop.  And non-conventional had worked for a time, with Lyanna in bed with the two of them, Lyanna—younger than she’d been when she’d met Rhaegar, who liked running around after Aegon as he learned to toddle, and who took Rhaenys to all the Disney movies Elia didn’t have the energy for.  Elia didn’t know how she would have gotten through her treatment if it weren’t for Lyanna, because God only knew that Rhaegar wasn’t around for it—all over the country playing his harp in fancy concert halls and leaving her alone with Chemo and two children and Lyanna.

He shouldn’t have been surprised when she’d asked for a divorce, when she’d asked for Alimony, Rhaenys, Aegon, and Lyanna—and gotten them.  She’d gotten the house too, and had been able to remove all of his shitty antique furniture that she’d hated, and she and Lyanna had found replacements together, laughing over how much space they had now that the matching dragon statues were gone from the living room.

Lyanna made her feel free, made her feel wanted, made her feel alive, and the two of them, snuggled in the massive bed she’d once shared with Rhaegar, her children between them, watching all the  _Star Wars_  movies in one go—that was bliss.

*

He didn’t know how to say what he wanted to say—not at all.  How did you say “I’m sorry you were abducted and abused and let’s just pretend it never happened, ok? Ice cream?”  

Usually, when he saw her, she was with one of her brothers, with Bran in his chair, or watching Rickon kick a soccer ball around, or maybe, just maybe, sitting and drinking coffee on a park bench with Robb.

How did you reach out to a girl who was pulling away?  How did you let her pull away—because she needed to do that, obviously—but so that she knew she could always come to you, reach out to you, rely on you if she wanted to?

But she never would want to, he assumed.  Never, probably.  Because why would she want to rely on anyone but her family after what had happened?  It made him sad—because he’d be the best friend in the world to her if she’d let him.  But he never thought she would.

*

His fucking sons couldn’t do anything fucking right.  Not one fucking thing.

"Remind me what I said about mixed fibers?" he demanded, glaring at Domeric.  Domeric, at the very least, should know better by now.  

"Dad, it’s such a stupid—" Domeric began, but Ramsay cut in "It was my idea, Dad."

"I don’t care whose fucking idea it was—we don’t stock mixed fiber clothing here.  Get rid of it," he snapped.

"Dad—it’d be good for business.  We could get some more people in here, because we’d have cheaper stuff."

"Are you whining at me, Domeric?" demanded Roose. 

Domeric’s jaw jutted out.  ”No.  I’m not.  I’m just—”

"What about ‘a front’ don’t you understand?" Roose breathed.  "We don’t  _want_  fucking business.  We have business where we need it and—”

"Yoohoo!" Her voice cut through the shop before the bell on the door even tinkled.   "Hello, darlings."  Walda was grinning broadly, her arms laden with bags.

"Mother."  "Mom."

"Well, don’t just stand there.  Help your step-mother," snapped Roose.

Domeric started forward and Ramsay slunk after him.  

"Thank you, boys," Walda said as they took all but one of her bags from her.  "Roosey, I just got you a new sweater."

Roose blinked.

"A new sweater?" he asked.

"Yes.  It was on sale at Marshall’s."

"It’s the middle of summer."

"And that’s the perfect time to stock up on all your fall and winter clothing.  I got matching ones for Domeric and Ramsay if they want them, too.  Final sale, so I can’t return them.  Here!" she withdrew a pastel pink sweater.  "Try it on."

Roose’s eyes widened.  ”I—” he stammered, but didn’t know how he would continue so he accepted the sweater and tugged it over his head.

"My Roose in rose!" beamed Walda.  She kissed him full on the mouth, slipping her tongue between his lips.  "I love it.  Here, boys—put these on."  She waved more pink sweaters at them.

Domeric looked mildly sickened and Ramsay’s jaw was dropped.  Roose, however, looked down at himself.  It was a decent cut, he supposed…and it had made Walda overjoyed to see him wearing it…

"Put them on," he commanded.  Domeric looked like he was contemplating reaching for the knife he kept tucked into his boot as he tugged on the sweater, and Ramsay was glaring bloody murder at Walda.

But she was beaming, and that made Roose…happy.

*

Grey had a tendency to drift from room to room in the middle of the night.  He’d text back and forth with Dany, or just stare out the window glumly.

A few times, Missandei tried to go out and talk to him, but if he was reticent during the day, he was just plain silent at night.  She did her best not to get upset by it.  She’d read online that this was normal (or, at least, wasn’t abnormal) for soldiers when they returned home.  And that wasn’t even going into…well…the sort of injury he’d had.

He’d been delirious when they’d first airlifted him out of Afghanistan—from blood loss and pain and horror.  And he’d been so high on morphine by the time she’d gotten into see him that he’d said, well, a lot of terrible things.  And she hoped that he didn’t think they were still true.

Because his injury  _didn’t_  make him a freak, and it wasn’t going to make people treat him differently, and it  _certainly_  wasn’t going to make  _her_  think any less of him. But it wasn’t his injury that would come between them.  It wasn’t  _that_.  She didn’t care—she wanted to scream it from the roof.   _I don’t care that it’s gone, Grey!  I care that_ you’re _gone!_

_*_

"Uncle!" she called, a bottle of tequila dangling from her fingertips.  "Uncle!"

The window she was staring at—the one on the third floor—swung open and Oberyn stuck his head out.

"Arianne, it is four in the morning," he hissed at her.  It was quiet enough that his voice carried down to the street.  

"I know that," she moaned.  "Let me up."  She didn’t need to be able to see him to know that he was rolling his eyes.

"Ellaria’s up here.  And a guest."

"What kind of guest."

“ _That_  kind of guest, Arianne.”

"So what’s another?  Let me up!" 

She felt him glaring at her, then he went back inside the apartment.  A moment later, she sees the little red light by the lock turn green and she pushes the door in and made her way, lurching slightly, towards the stairs.

Her uncle was wearing a red silk bathrobe with a black lacy fringe and a severe looking frown when he opened the door. 

"Having fun, Uncle?" she demanded, pushing past him and making her way towards his bedroom.  He grabbed her wrist. 

"No—no, Arianne.  I’ll set up the couch for you."

"Uncle," she whined.

"It is four in the morning, I don’t have time for this," he snapped.  He dragged her into the small sitting room and sat her down on a chair while he dragged some sheets out of a cupboard.

"What are you doing here?" he asked at last.

"Daemon," she mumbled, "He broke up with me."

She heard her uncle hiss.  ”What?”

"He broke up with me," she repeated, and god she wished she weren’t crying.  What must he think of her, sloppy drunk and crying at four in the morning.  He came and sat down next to her, placing a hand on her shoulder.  

"Well," he said softly, "We’ll make him regret it."

She would have laughed, but she knew when her uncle sounded like he meant it.

*

Seeing her talking to Justin after church made his blood boil.  

Justin was a womanizer.  Everyone knew that.  And, thank god, he wasn’t married, because then he’d be an adulterer too.  Justin had spent too much time with Robert growing up.  Who in their right mind would have ever let Robert babysit their child…In any case, he didn’t like the way that Justin looked at her, the way he smiled his crooked smile, the way he puffed out his chest and tried to get her to laugh.

She never seemed to notice those motions, though.  She certainly didn’t seem to take him up on any of his invitations to dinner, mini-golf, or Six Flags Great Adventure.

But the possibility that she might…that ate at him.  Because it should be  _him_.

*

It was very bright outside, but she didn’t leave the building, though the others all had gone.  She hovered just inside the door, waiting, letting sweat pool on the back of her neck.  She checked her watch.  It was ten-past now.  They were running late.

The door down the hall swung open, and a few people made their way out.  Theon wasn’t there.  She waited a few more minutes, letting the others pass her by.  When he still didn’t emerge, she went down the hall and poked her head around the door.

There was a man crouched in front of him, talking quietly.  She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but Theon was nodding, his thin hair quivering and she realized he was crying.

The crouching man glanced up and asked loudly, “Can I help you, Ma’am?”

"I’m just checking on Theon," she said quietly.   Theon glanced over his shoulder, his cheeks wet.  He took a deep, shuddering breath, then stood up, wincing as he put weight on his feet.

"Sorry," he mumbled wetly.  "I didn’t mean to keep you waiting."  

"It’s all right," she replied.  "I know how it is the first time."  Because she did.  She’d gone to these support groups now for nearly six months.  And they were  _hard_  and the number of times she’d driven back to the tiny apartment she and Theon shared nearly blinded by her own tears was higher than she’d ever told Theon.  He had only seen those tears a few times.

He hobbled towards her with a muttered “thanks” to the discussion leader and took her arm as they made their way out of the school building.

"Sorry," he said again as she helped him into the passenger side.  He didn’t like driving anymore—it hurt his feet.

She pressed a quick kiss to his cheek.  ”It’s really all right.  I’m proud of you.  It’s hard reliving hell.”

Even as she said the words, she felt as though her entire body went cold.  She stood very still, her hand on the door of the passenger side.  

"Jeyne?" Theon asked.  His eyes were wide, and she knew he knew.  "Jeyne—I’m here.  It’s all right."

She bit her lip and closed the door, making herself go to the driver’s side and get in the car.  She buckled herself in and gripped the wheel, taking deep breaths.

"I’m proud of you too," Theon said, and Jeyne began to cry.

*

She had taken to reading all the books her mother had tried so hard to get her to read in high school.  Books that had belonged to her grandfather, with hardback covers and pages that had gone yellow and dusty from spending years unopened.  

On Sunday mornings—when her parents had gone off to church, and Bran was out with his friends and Arya and Rickon were asleep—she would curl up on the couch in the living room and read for hours on end.  She used to hate reading in the living room—the sunlight was too bright and made her feel like she needed sunglasses to even see the page in front of her.  Not so with the yellow pages of Grandpa Hoster’s copy of  _Ivanhoe_ , or  _Le Mort d’Arthur,_ which seemed to glow pleasantly.

She could lose herself in those words for hours on end, in tales of knights and gallantry and chivalry.  She could lose herself and feel nothing at all.

*

"You kind of astound me, you know."  Well, that was a surprise.  It had been a good date—better than any Loras had been on in a long while.  Renly was older than him, and wasn’t quite athletic, but he was funny, and nice, and knew what it was like to be a youngest brother.  Also, his eyes were to die for.  And his beard was cute.

"The good kind of astound, or the bad kind?"  Loras tried to sound nonchalant.  

"Like—how are you real?  I feel like I’ve looked and looked and looked and looked, and then you just kind of appear with your perfect hair and your nice smile and your good taste in comedy and—"

"Look,  _Parks and Rec_  is a requirement for dating me, ok?”

Renly laughed, the skin around his eyes crinkling slightly.  ”I just kind of can’t believe you’re real—that’s all.”

Loras didn’t know how to respond.  So he leaned in and kissed him, tasting the wine they’d shared over dinner, and a little bit of chocolate mousse.  Renly wrapped his arms around him, and he hummed happily into Renly’s lips.

*

His face was probably redder than a tomato.  Well, that was an exaggeration—but certainly redder than his hair.

"I—I didn’t mean—that came out wrong.  I just meant—" Oh god, he was babbling too.  He was actually babbling.  If he could, he would stuff his fist into his mouth, but that didn’t seem to be either an option, or, indeed, a sensible course of action.  Certainly not while she was standing there giggling behind her hands.  Maybe he could spontaneously develop X-Men powers and sink through the floor of the elevator.

He took a deep breath.  ”What must you think of me.”

"I’m flattered, actually," said Myrcella ( _Myrcella!_ Little Cella B. who had come and played in their pool during the summer, who had played Dress Up with Sansa.  Fucking fuck, he hadn’t made the connection).  Her voice was thick with laughter, and he knew  his face was probably the color of a rich Bordeaux by now.

"Really?"  He could hardly believe it.

"Really.  Maybe I’ll tell your father just how well you’ve," The elevator dinged open, and her eyes definitely flicked down and that was it, he was moving to Switzerland at the soonest possible opportunity, "grown up too."

There was a definite sway to her hips as she left the elevator and walked down the hall, and it wasn’t until the doors began closing again that Robb remembered he needed to get out too.

*

Tyrion tried not to think about it—about them.  

They thought they were very clever, going through three children and over twenty years of marriage (in Cersei’s case) without anyone guessing.  But Tyrion didn’t have to guess—he knew.  He’d always known.  There wasn’t anything to hide from him, anything they could find from him.

When he had been seven, he’d seen the two of them in the bushes behind their house.  Cersei had been playing with Jaime’s penis, a curious expression on her face.  And when Tyrion had gone past, they’d stopped, suddenly terrified, Jaime pulling himself back into his pants.  He’d pretended not to notice.  It was easier for all of them.  But if they thought he’d forgotten…

He tried not to think about it.  It was better that way.  Because watching the two of them whispering to one another—in a way that was not so much twin-y as lover-ly—he knew that they probably still examined one another’s bodies in secret, and that Cersei’s face wouldn’t be so curious now—not even close.  She probably had a smirk on her face, her hands running up and down Jaime’s cock as he did his best not to pump into her fists, or maybe her eyes would be rolling back into her head as Jaime thrust into her, lips red and wet and gasping.

He didn’t like to think about it.  Because when he did—he thought about it in far to great detail.

*

How do you tell your grieving girlfriend that you hated her father?

Like, not the sort of passive hate that you have for the idiots who tried to shove your head down a toilet in middle school, the kind of casual hate that is such a part of your being that you hardly notice it anymore—a real hate, deep and burning down in the very pit of your belly, that threatened to make the bile rise in your throat at the very mention of his name.

Probably not at his funeral, right? That would be poor form, right? You couldn’t just say “I am glad the manipulative fucker is dead,” as much as he would have happily screamed it from the top of your lungs.

Roslin was dressed in black and her face was subdued as Edmure helped her out of the car. She held his hand tightly as they crossed the parking lot and made their way towards the church. He didn’t ask her if she was all right—he knew better than to do that today of all days. Today was the one day since her mother had died that it was acceptable to be not ok. Her eyes were red and her lower lop was trembling and god, she was trying so hard to be strong, to keep everything hidden away. But he knew. Edmure always knew.

Funny. The one thing that could make him sad that Walder Frey had died was seeing Roslin upset.

*

"Rick? Rickon, can you hear me?"

"Yes"—he wanted to say.  "Yes I can.  I can hear you and is that Billy Mays because I think it is except maybe not because his voice sounds bendier and Billy Mays doesn’t have a bendy voice and—" But he didn’t say any of that, because she was still crouching over him, pulling back his eyelids.

"Oh god, Mom’s going to go nuts," she sighed.  

"I didn’t mean it…" he heard Devan mumble.  What hadn’t Devan meant?  He couldn’t remember.  The last thing he could remember was—holy hell, the sky hadn’t been  _that_ bright, had it?  It was all silver and puffy and—wait, those were the clouds.

"Should we…I dunno…move him or something?" he heard Shireen ask nervously.

"No," Sansa said.  "He should stay put.  He’s definitely hit his head hard."

He had, hadn’t he.  Hit his head.  He’d gone in to kick the soccer ball and had slid and…no, that was last week that he’d done that.  How had he hit his head this time.  

"I’ll call Dad," Shireen was saying.  "He’ll know what to do."

He saw Sansa come into view again, her lips pursed and her blue eyes very oblong…no oblong was wrong.  Oblong was very wrong.  You couldn’t have oblong eyes, unless you were an alien, and Sansa wasn’t an alien.  Was she?  Oh god, what if Sansa had been abducted by aliens and replaced by a body-snatcher with oblong eyes and—

"Oh god, he’s fainting."

*

"And remind me—how did you let this happen?"

There were times when he looked at his children and saw them as just that—little children, in need of a stern talking to.  Jaime with mud on his knees after playing baseball in his khakis, Cersei when she had failed a history paper and Tyrion just generally.  Sometimes, they had the decency to look abashed.  Today was not one of those days.

Cersei was glaring at him, her teeth gritted and cold defiance written all over her face.  ”It’s not a matter of  _letting_  anything happen anymore, father.  Joffrey is more than capable of making his own—”

"As much as you are," Tywin barked.  "And let me tell you, if I thought that you were going to do something damaging to this family, I would be able to stop you—you mark my words."

She arched her eyebrows.  ”Really, now?  Then why didn’t you stop me from not stopping Joffrey?”

"Don’t get smart with me," Tywin replied, looking away.  He didn’t like it when Cersei raised her eyebrows.  When she did, she looked much too much like Joanna.  

"I thought you liked it when we were smart, father?" Tyrion snorted.  He’d been silent up till now, and Tywin had almost forgotten he was in the room.  "I seem to recall you saying that my one good trait was that I wasn’t stupid."

It was a dark day when Tyrion and Cersei teamed together, and Tywin knew better than to let them get any traction.  ”Tell me, if you’re as smart as you claim, how do you plan on heading this off?”

"I plan to speak with Ned Stark’s lawyer as soon as possible.  Or, at the very least—"

"Speaking with Stark’s lawyer doesn’t head anything off."

"It does, actually.  You see, if I speak with them, they might just decide to settle out of court."

"They should decide to drop all charges."  Immediately after they’d come out of his mouth, he wished he hadn’t said them. 

Now Tyrion was raising his eyebrows.  ”You’re a smart man too, Father.  Do you really think that the Starks will do that?”

Tywin fixed Tyrion with a gaze he hoped was stonier than Mount Rushmore.  He took a sip of his coffee, then said.  ”It doesn’t matter.  You will fix it.”

*

She hadn’t come with him, in the end.  He could have gotten her out.  Would have been easy.  He wouldn’t have had any trouble shooting Meryn in the fucking face if it meant getting out of there.  He hadn’t signed up for arson.  But she hadn’t come with him.  She’d been sure they’d be caught and then they’d  be in even more trouble.

If she’d come, maybe he would have been caught.  Maybe she would have slowed him down, and gotten them both in trouble.  But probably not.  

She should have come with him.

*

When she’d been younger, she had been very,  _very_  good at playing shooting games on Robb’s Play Station.  Better than Robb ever had been, that was for sure.  But then again, Robb didn’t really have hand-eye coordination, and Arya had played volleyball for most of her youth.  She’d gotten in trouble for bouncing her ball around the house, doing tips against the wall, or, when he was being particularly annoying, popping the ball into Rickon’s face.  Mom had always shouted about that.  Rickon had usually laughed.  Or shouted.  Depending on what kind of mood he was in.

She’d liked the shooter games—making her player have a long swishy black coat, and masks, and some sort of steam-punk bullshit type of strap-work across her chest.  She’d given her characters short hair—like herself—and rolled her eyes that there weren’t any options for girls with small boobs, because, honestly, if you were going to be running around shooting people, you’d  _at least_  wear a sports bra.

She’d spent hours in front of the television playing that game—sneaking beers out of the fridge for Gendry and making up ridiculous backstories for each of the villains because the ones that the video game had were lame.  Gendry always changed guns—unsure if he wanted a machine gun, or a sniper rifle, or, at times, the bazooka launcher.  She’d always picked the same guns—a pair of glocks that she could keep tucked away in the weird strappy things if she needed to.

It had been oddly easy transitioning from blue plastic to black metal in her hands.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missandei, Shireen, Melisandre, Robert, Mya, Roslin, Oberyn, Daario, Rickon, Sansa, Ellaria, Mellario, Asha, Dacey, Arianne, Quentyn, Sam, Aeron, Euron, Arya,

Shireen liked watching people walking by and imagining what their lives were like.  That boy with the dog—he was worried about getting into an acting class.  That little old lady crossing the street couldn’t remember the name of the grandson she was going to babysit.  And the couple arguing in the car?  They were just both dealing with the fallout of the threesome where they both realized they were more in love with the third party than with each other.

People-watching was something she’d always had—something she’d fallen in love with while waiting for her mother to finish up with church functions.  She’d step outside, and lean against the columns on either side of the main doors and watch the people going past.

That woman with her nose in a book was studying English—she wasn’t from the US and wanted to pass her citizenship test.  That child eating an ice cream cone?  He was lactose intolerant but didn’t care if the ice cream made him feel ill later because he liked the taste of it on his tongue.  That woman…

Sometimes she paused.  Sometimes she saw someone who looked lost, or alone, or confused, or something indescribable, and she wanted to do what her mother had always told her any good Christian would do and go up to them and ask them what was wrong.  

This woman was biting her lip, her arms crossed over her chest, looking across the road as she waited for the traffic light to change. But she wasn’t looking at the light itself, or the trees on the other side, but rather down at the curb.  She looked…she looked like she was on the verge of defeat and Shireen hated it.  But before Shireen could go over to her, extend the courtesy of friendship to a stranger who looked like she might want it, the light changed, and the woman was gone, walking swiftly away.

*

"So this is why you’ve found faith in your old age! You’re a human after all!"  Robert clapped a hand heavily on Stannis’ shoulder.

Stannis gritted his teeth.  

"It’s hardly my old age," he stated matter-of-factly, taking another sip of his Virgin Bloody Mary.  "And I’ve been going to church for many years now."

"Yes—but I’ve never heard you  _talk_  about church the way you talk about it now.”  Robert waggled his eyes in a very suggestive way that made Stannis rather want to rip them off his brother’s face.  ”And now that I see your Red Woman, I can understand.”

"She’s hardly my ‘Red Woman’," Stannis growled, "She’s a dear friend of Selyse’s.  And there are a great many things you’ve never heard me talk about, Robert.  Largely because you never listen to me when I try."

"Yes, yes.  If you say so," Robert replied lightly.  "Though I have always wondered where your faith comes from and now I understand."

"You’re being repetitive," Stannis snapped.  "And I—"  He stopped.  Melisandre was there, standing tall—almost as tall as Robert, he realized suddenly, her neck arched in such a way that made him notice the way that it connected her shoulder and head for the first time.

"You are Robert?" she asked, her eyes piercing into Robert.  Robert’s jaw dropped.

"I am, Miss…." he trailed off, the unasked question of her name floating in the air.  She ignored it.

"You are a rather poor specimen in comparison to your brother," she said with narrow eyes.  "Highly immoral."

Robert’s jaw, if it hadn’t been connected to his face, would probably have hit the ground already.  It almost made Stannis smile.

"Stannis," she said, turning her attention to him, "If you would join me and Selyse in the kitchen.  We need help with the lobsters."

She took his wrist and led him across the living room and into the kitchen.

"Thank you," he said.

"You looked in need of rescuing," she shrugged.  "Your brother is a swine."

"You don’t need to tell me that," he agreed.

"Truly nothing compared to you."

He could have kissed her for that alone.  He could have pushed her up against the counter of the empty kitchen, damn the thirty people in his living room and taken her right there next to the lemons they should be slicing to let the guests squeeze over the lobster meat.

"Where is Selyse?" he made himself ask.

"She asked me to help with the lobsters while she helped the wheelchair-bound Stark boy with the bathroom."

"Ah."

She was so close to him, and they were so very alone.

"I’m not as good a person as you think I am," he confessed, hardly daring to look at her, but somehow unable to break eye contact.

"I know," she replied softly.

And he kissed her.

*

"You waiting on someone?" the bartender asked.

"Nope.  Just me," Roslin replied.  

"What’ll it be?"

"Black Label.  Neat."

"Just a moment."

She was tall—the bartender.  Roslin always noticed when people were tall.  She imagined it came from being short.  But this bartender, with her wiry black curls and her broad shoulders looked like she could have been a wrestler, or, Roslin supposed, a mountain climber—given the plaid flannel she was wearing.

"Who died?" the bartender asked.

"My father."

"Oh shit.  I didn’t mean…sorry."  The bartender looked like she wanted to sink through the floor.

"He died a few weeks ago," Roslin said quickly.  "It’s just…well, it’s complicated."

The bartender smiled and poured her a glass.  She downed it in one go, then nodded for another one.

The bartender’s eyes narrowed.  ”Are you the type who wants to drink their problems away in silence, or talk my ear off? I’m Mya, by the way,” 

"Roslin," Roslin replied.

"So, Roslin, where are your troubles?"

"Do you have siblings?"

"No."

"I have too many."

"That can’t be quite true," Mya said.  She sounded like she didn’t believe that it was possible to have too many siblings.

"Well, it is.  Do you know what vultures look like when they’re circling their dead prey?"

"I’ve seen a documentary on National Geographic."

"Well…imagine vultures ripping apart a carcass that’s too small to feed them all.  That’s my family."  She downed the second whiskey.

*

Daario: Are you familiar with the name Daenerys Targaryen?

Oberyn: If I recall correctly, she’s my Sister’s Ex’s little sister.  Why?

Daario: 10/10 would bang.

Oberyn: She comes from a good gene pool.

Daario: Is it awkward that I’m telling you this?  Do you not want to know?

Oberyn: Daario, honey, you’re a good lay, but I’m not mooning over your sweet ass.  And I’m all about hate-fucking Targaryens, to be honest. 

Daario: It wouldn’t be a hate fuck.

Oberyn: Well, Rhaegar would flip a shit if someone like you banged his sister, ergo, I must condone it.  There’s no way that I can’t.

Daario: Maybe I can bring her to Paris and you can meet her and bang her yourself?  We can have a grand old orgy with Ellaria.

Oberyn: And some other friends I’ve met here.  I’m in the process of trying to corrupt one now.

Daario: Really now?  

Oberyn: Yes.

Daario: Are you going to give me more dirt than that?

Oberyn: Not really.  Not yet.  But if you get Daenerys Targaryen over here for an orgy, I promise I’ll introduce you.  I don’t think you’re his type, though, to be honest, with that hair of yours, I’m not sure you’re anyone’s type.

Daario: Daenerys digs my hair.

Oberyn: Really?

Daario: Yep.  Thinking of dying the pubes so that the carpet match the drapes when I bang her.

Oberyn: I can’t tell if that’s an awful idea or a terrible one.

Daario: Probably terrible.  But it will be so worth it.

Oberyn: I think that’s where I’m coming out.  Send me a dick pic if you go through with it.

Daario: Naturally.

Daario: One last question before I need to get back to my dissertation.

Oberyn: Shoot.

Daario: I need to get a tooth replaced.  Is gold too much?  I kind of want it.

Oberyn: Hey, you do you.  If you want a gold tooth, you get a gold tooth.

Daario: Sweet.  I’ll send a pic of that too.  Miss ya, babe!

*

Rickon had always been been Bran’s.  They’d all paired off when they’d been younger—her and Arya, Robb and their cousin Jon, Bran and Rickon.  Rickon had always been so much younger, so much more rambunctious than any of the rest of them, and he’d been, for many years a complete mystery to Sansa.  He’d been the one to charge into the house at top speed, racing loudly up the stairs, banging his backpack to the ground as he shed it.  He’d been the one to burst into tears over the slightest challenge he faced at school.  He’d been the one who always shouted while watching baseball, basketball, ice hockey, football, soccer on television, even when Dad asked him to shut up for a little while.

Rickon, now, older, was no calmer—but he had better control.  And on lazy Sundays, when Sansa would just sit and read, sit and forget, sit and ignore, Rickon would be there with her, his eyes focused on the screen of his gameboy.  

She slowly became aware of what Bran had always called “Rickon’s Recharge”—Rickon, who threw off more energy than Sansa could physically understand, needed quiet sometimes, needed to shut the world out too.  But Rickon needed someone around to do it—usually Bran, sometimes Shireen or Devan, and now, occasionally, Sansa.

*

He knew what it looked like when Cat worried—knew better than anyone.  She didn’t chew her lip, or clench her jaw the way that Lyanna did, she didn’t get agitated and pace the way that Brandon had, she didn’t even do what he did and go very quiet.

Cat went still.  Every movement she made seemed suddenly inhuman, as though a statue were moving, as though each change position came at great personal effort.  Cat, who was usually so full of life, of gentleness, of smoothness, became rigid.

He tried to ask her about it, about what made her nervous, about why she was so very still.  But when Cat was stiff, she’d shake him off, she’d pretend nothing was wrong because the wars in her head took up too much space for her to realize that he was there with her, there to help her.  And, of course, this time, he knew exactly what her trouble was, exactly why she lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling as though willing it to turn into stone.

Sansa.  Sansa and what had happened to her, Sansa and the fact that she didn’t ever want to leave the house without company, Sansa and the way her body seemed to collapse if you watched her long enough to know that she was thinking of  _it_  again.

Sansa kept Cat awake at night.  But Cat never noticed that Ned stayed awake too—or at least, she never commented on it.  Cat didn’t ask him what kept him awake, either.  Because for Cat, it was always Sansa, who reminded her of Lysa, of herself, of her own dreams.  And Ned worried about her as well. his little girl with her bright smile and Cat’s eyes.  But it was not Sansa, and Sansa’s demons that kept Ned awake at night, fear and nerves gnawing at his chest.

It was Arya.

*

On Thursdays, when Oberyn was in the library, Ellaria caught the 8 and took it to Grands Boulevards, where she would go to a little cafe in an alley.  She would never wait too long, and was sometimes even late—though not often.  Ellaria liked being prompt. She found that it defied stereotypes.

Mellario would usually sweep in about ten minutes after Ellaria, order un petit cafe and launch unceremoniously into stories about work.  They never spoke about Oberyn, and they certainly never spoke about Doran, though if either one had stories of their children, those were welcome topics of discussion.

Mellario was sophisticated in a way that Ellaria had never really been able to achieve.  She supposed it came from coming from the upper crust—or maybe it was just that she was Italian.  Ellaria wasn’t sure.  But their friendship had surprised both of them many years before, during long conversations over dinner with Elia, counseling her about leaving Rhaegar, comparing school paths for their children, deciding whether or not to actually settle in Paris, because Ellaria liked the idea of living in America, where the bac wasn’t hanging over her daughters’ heads.  Mellario was intense, in the way that those with high standards were, and somehow, Ellaria met those standards.

When Mellario had stormed out of Doran’s life, eye makeup dripping down her face, neither one of them had assumed that their friendship would halt.  And it hadn’t.  Whenever Arianne showed up drunk at her apartment at three in the morning, Ellaria took care of her.  When Petite Elia stopped by Mellario’s shop on her way home from school, there was always a smile and a warm word.

And on Thursdays, when Oberyn assumed that she was off being painted, Ellaria had coffee with Mellario.

*

"So, you’re Alysane’s new girlfriend?"  Alysane didn’t have brothers.  She did have an older sister though, a tall girl with thick dark hair and bright green eyes.  She looked a lot like Alysane, actually, except Alysane was shorter and stockier.  Dacey looked like she was a cross between a power ranger and a unicorn.

"Girlfriend’s a strong word, Dacey.  You know I don’t do that," Alysane said, elbowing her sister in the ribs.

Dacey snorted.  ”Fine.  You’re Alysane’s new plaything?” 

Asha did her best not to grin.  That was probably the easiest way to describe it.  Evenings spent tied to Alysane’s bed while Alysane dripped wax on her tits and called her a number of filthy things…yes, plaything seemed about right.   “You could call it that,” she said, trying to sound as respectful as possible.  Sure, Alysane liked it when she gave lip, but impressing the older sister…that was a whole different matter.

She’d played that once.  Exactly once—before Theon had gotten all fucked up.  And she wouldn’t dare pull that shit on Jeyne now.  Jeyne—who was stronger than Asha could put to words.  But she wouldn’t be surprised if Dacey Mormont wanted to chew her up and spit her out, just for fun.

"And how long have you two been…whatever it is you’re doing?" asked Dacey.

"Long enough," Alysane interjected, "for you not to have to worry about the answer to that question."

"Will you let her answer, or is that not your dynamic?" demanded Dacey.  "I mean for fuck’s sake, it’s not like I don’t know what you get up to, but seriously, that shouldn’t affect—"

"Two months," said Asha.  "Five days.  Not that I’m counting."

"You’re totally counting," teased Alysane.

"So what if I am?" Asha asked.  "Why shouldn’t I count how long good sex has been going on?"

"You should be," winked Alysane.  

A horrified look crossed Dacey’s face.  ”I am realizing that I really don’t want to be present for the rest of this conversation.”

"Too late for that, Dacey," grinned Alysane.  "You haven’t even asked how we met!"

*

"Come on, Quentyn—don’t be an ass!"

It was the mantra of his childhood, really.  Arianne was a race horse, and he was an ass.  He hated the metaphor, of course.  But it had been put in his head when he was too young to shake it off, overhearing his mother jabbering away on the phone to her mother in Italian.  Quentyn couldn’t speak Italian, but he could understand it.  He could only speak English.  Arianne could speak English, Spanish, Italian, French, and she’d begun Japanese in college.  It wasn’t fair.  Not fair at all.  Arianne was perfect in every way, adored—the favorite cousin by far and he was just an ass.

And he knew it was because she was far away.  Going to AUP was one of those things that just made Arianne seem that much more talented—even if it wasn’t as good a school as all the ones that Quentyn had gotten into.  And staying in Paris after college had been worse. Coming home from Paris with Parisian gifts for everyone in the family, and stories of Mother and Uncle Oberyn and Aunt Ellaria and the four little snakes (as she called them affectionately) was just so much more exciting than Quentyn coming home from Ithaca.  When did Cornell stop seeming like a good school?  It was a fucking Ivy, God damn it.  And yet, Arianne got all the attention.

And he knew that Dad, at least, cared a lot about him.  Dad, at least, was proud of sending him off to Cornell, that he had gotten into the MD/PHD Program there, that he had gotten good grades (Arianne’s grades were positively shitty in comparison, but no one cared, because she was in fucking Paris), that he was close enough to come home, whether he was in Ithaca or New York, if ever Dad’s health got bad and Trystane needed help taking care of him.  

Quentyn had dreamed of travelling the world once, with friends at his side.  How had Arianne gotten to do it when he couldn’t?  It wasn’t fair.  But then again, life was easier if you were a thoroughbred race horse; life was harder if you were an ass.

*

The reading lab was quiet when Shireen arrived, that morning.  She settled into her desk in peace, pulling up her gmail, her facebook, briefly making sure that the world hasn’t exploded between home and work.  (It hadn’t—or at least not at her.  Rickon seemed to be having a meltdown over some football match he had gotten up early to watch, and her mother was complaining about her father’s dental bills.  ”If only he’d just stop grinding his teeth!  And he never uses a bite plate.  It’s getting out of hand.”)  

Shireen liked getting to work early.  She liked having moments of peace and quiet before shit hit the fan—funders frustrated with budget proposals, the development team being incompetent morons again, the administrative bullshit that happens before the kids came by for the after school program.  She liked being able to breathe deeply at her desk before responding to the emails that had inevitably piled up over the course of the night she’d been away from the office.

"Morning, Shireen!" Sam had arrived, a large iced-coffee in hand and sweat dripping down his face from the strong sunshine  between his car and the air conditioned interior of the office.  

"Hello," Shireen replied cheerfully.  "How’s the baby?"

"He was crying all night," Sam sighed.  "I must have walked him around the house eight times and he was still fussy."

"Is he sick?" Shireen asked.  

"Gilly’s taking him in to the doctor today.  I think he’s all right, but I can’t be too sure.  And obviously, we wouldn’t want to risk anything."  

"It certainly explains the coffee," she grinned, nodding at the drink in his hand.

Sam only smiled in reply.

"You have the fours today?" she asked.  

"Yes.  At three thirty.  And you have the eights?"  

Shireen nodded.  Then she dropped her voice.  ”Rast has the twos.”

Sam rolled his eyes.  ”Again?  I thought we’d taken them away from him.”

"Yes, well— _someone,”_ she jerked her eyes meaningfully towards Janos’ office, “didn’t get that particular memo, apparently.”

"I sent it at least three times!" Sam said quietly.

"Well…it apparently didn’t register."

"It’s probably sitting there unread in his email while he diddles away on Twitter."

Shireen didn’t say anything, but Sam understood exactly what she  _wasn’t_  saying.  He pursed his lips and Shireen pursed her lips right back, and Sam made his way heavily over to his desk.

*

Euron was back and Aeron felt dread pooling in his stomach.

 _He was supposed to stay away.  He was supposed to be gone to hell.  How can he be back_?

But there he was, standing as if he’d never left, his eye smiling over at him as if…as if…

"You miss me?" Euron asked, exhaling the smoke of his cigarette right into Aeron’s face.

 _No.  Not at all.  Go to hell, you fucker_.  He didn’t say it though.  He didn’t say anything.

"How’s Vic?"

 _Go fuck yourself—why are you back?_   

And Aeron was alone with him—completely alone.  For the first time without brothers and nephews and niece, he was alone with Euron, and he hadn’t been that scared since he was a child and Euron had dragged him out of bed to go swimming in Lake Michigan under the starlight.

He’d been alone then, and Euron had dragged him under the water, pushed him, held him until he lost consciousness so that Euron could make it look like he’d rescued his stupid brother from drowning, laughing when Aeron had tried to convince dad that that  _wasn’t_ what had happened, because no one ever called Euron on a lie.

"Aren’t you going to invite me in?" 

The question hung in the air and Aeron wanted so much to slam the door in his brother’s face. But he didn’t—couldn’t.  He’d never been able to stand up to Euron.  He merely stood aside.

*

They’d always been thrown together a lot growing up.  It was bound to happen—they were the same age.  Robb and Jon would go off and be older; Sansa would moon over Joffrey; Bran, Myrcella, Tommen and Rickon would usually play card games or something; and Shireen and Arya would run around outside.

Shireen never ran around outside except when Arya was around.  She was always the bookish type, and lord only knew that her father had a lot of books for her to read.  From a young age, she spent most of her afternoons curled up in her bed with some story or another held up above her face.  But someone needed to keep an eye on Arya and make sure she didn’t end up going down the hill and trying to break onto the Amtrak tracks or something stupid.  And besides, there was something so fun about Arya—the way she never seemed to take no for an answer, the way she always had plans about what tree to climb next, or which direction they should go in when exploring the woods out back.  She was daring, and Shireen wished she were daring.  With Arya, she could pretend to be daring.

She’d been sad when Arya had gone away—sad that Arya had just up and left.  Spending time talking about books with Bran was nice, and she and Myrcella had always gotten on pretty well—for all their differences—but there was no one quite like Arya, who told it like it was and made her mother nervous just because what happened if Arya got Shireen into trouble?

Arya never got Shireen into trouble.  She didn’t get other people into trouble.  She just got herself into trouble.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommen, Sansa, Ashara, Allyria, Bran, Jojen, Melisandre, Davos, Jaime, Tyrion, Robert, Asha, Theon, Jeyne, Ned, Gendry, Cersei, Lyanna, Viserys, Walda, Wynafryd, Brandon, Myrcella, Robb, Arya, Rickon, Bran,

Myrcella liked to joke that Tommen was going to turn into a crazy old cat lady. He’d adopted his first cat—(Ser Pounce—he’d named him) when he was eight and had found the kitten in the back yard. Joffrey had rolled his eyes that Tommen had wanted a kitten of all things. But when Tommen had started crying, Dad had told Joffrey to stop it and let the calico kitten sleep in Tommen’s room.

“I’m not picking up its shit though,” Dad had said. “That’s for you to do. Teach you some responsibility.”

Tommen had cleaned Ser Pounce’s litterbox religiously, and when he’d gone off to college for his freshman year, he had brought the cat with him, and he and Robert (Arryn. He always got people confused when he mentioned Robert. They’d get this look in their eyes like they didn’t understand why he was calling Dad by his first name) had kept Ser Pounce clandestinely in their room—even though the University would fine them each one hundred and fifty dollars if it was ever discovered they were keeping a cat in there.

It only got worse sophomore year, when they were allowed to live off campus and he and Robert found two new cats—rescues from the SPCA that Tommen volunteered at. They were twins—identical except for the girl was completely black and the boy had white boots on his feet. (Boots, they had named him. And Lady Whiskers for the little girl cat, whose white whiskers shone like moonbeams out of her little black face.) Ser Pounce had tolerated them. He hadn’t let them sleep in Tommen’s bed with him, no matter how many times they tried. Ser Pounce was old though, and aggressive. And set in his ways. And he ate the Kittens’ food, even though he should be on senior care dry food at that point.

There was something in the world so peaceful about cats, Tommen thought. They were just so lazy (except, at three in the morning, when they were romping about like the criminally insane. But then, at least, they were good company for him as he finished his economics papers). Tommen liked that someone could be lazy, that they could sleep all day in the sunshine and it wouldn’t matter at all if they slept an extra hour because they didn’t have class to go to, or Mother to call when Tommen got out of swimming practice, or even Robert to argue with about who would take out the recycling. There was just their little kitty world and somehow that made Tommen feel all right.

*

_She knew it was a dream because his burns were purple. Not bruised purple the way they were after he and Meryn had gotten into a fight and Meryn had given him a black eye. (He’d given Meryn worse though.) They were the color of the lilacs that grew in the backyard of Aunt Lyanna’s and Aunt Elia’s house. They looked like they had been painted on his face by a six year old who still had more talent than Sansa had when it came to painting._

_She was wearing a blue gingham dress—like the one that Mom wore when she got into a nineteen-fifties kind of mood and made Dad wear seersucker. It was a button-down dress with an a-line, and she wore a white leather belt around her waist._

_"Want to play cards?" she asked him—calmly, her voice feeling like glass. He didn’t respond and they were playing. He had a jack high straight, and she had a flush in diamonds and he was grinning that grin that he grinned when there was something that entertained him without actually humoring him. He did that a lot, she’d noticed when they’d been driving through Iowa—he grinned at things that weren’t funny, as if grinning would make them funny._

_"You think the world isn’t funny?" she asked him in her dream. And he blinked at her, the violet painted scars changing color, bubbling on his skin, melting and he cried out and she was throwing the cards at him as if hoping that it would make his skin stop boiling, or maybe it was in fear, it was nervousness—she wasn’t sure. Men’s faces weren’t supposed to melt like that. Or, if they melted, they should melt like things melt in dreams, like a Salvador Dalí clock. She was glad his face wasn’t melting like a Dalí clock. She was glad that she didn’t have to see what would happen if his face actually came off—the way he’d been afraid it would be when the house was burning down._

_He was clutching at his face, though, crying out and calling her a fucking bitch because she’d made his face burn off and it was better when his face didn’t burn off because at least then he knew that his face wasn’t on fire. Why did she have to go and make his face catch fire again—her with her sad eyes and pearl necklaces and lace underwear that he’d only seen once because he’d walked in on her after Joffrey but couldn’t get out of his head and that made his face burn off and he had had enough of his face burning off when he was seven and_

Sansa knew it was a dream when she woke up, her skin damp with cold sweat and her throat dry,  her blood pumping hard as if trying to pass through her veins and dampen her throat because she was safe now—she was home.

*

One of Allyria’s first memories was of Ashara.  ”Of Ashara” she thought on purpose, because she Ashara wasn’t there.  Ashara was in the hospital.  (“Again,” she heard mother say on the phone to someone.)  She hadn’t known what it had meant, but she’d been scared because she’d never seen her mother looking so sad, so confused, as she ran her fingers through blonde hair and bit her lip into the telephone.

Allyria knew what that memory was now, of course.  It was the second time that Ashara had tried to kill herself, jumping off the roof of their grandparents’ three story house.  She hadn’t succeeded in it—but she had broken both of her legs and a few ribs, and this, in turn, had led to the next batch of memories that Allyria had of Ashara—the two of them home together when everyone else was at work, or school, playing board games.  Ashara would read to her sometimes, and she would go and get Ashara apple sauce out of the fridge when Ashara got hungry  and they would watch the tapes of  _The Nutcracker_  even though it wasn’t Christmastime because Allyria loved watching the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and Ashara just loved watching them dance, especially while she couldn’t.

Everyone remembered Ashara in high school, all the teachers had had her, all of them remembered her dance recitals, all of them asked after her health—dreading the answer because what if she tried jumping again?  Allyria didn’t think she was anything like Ashara.  She was boring in comparison, but then again, everyone was boring in comparison to Ashara—everyone thought so.  Except Ashara.  Ashara didn’t think she was exciting.  Ashara would always point at Arthur, flashy Arthur with his bright smile and his easy demeanor.  But Ashara didn’t know what it was like to fly to New York a few times a year to see herself perform.  

It was strange, growing up in the shadow of someone who was convinced that they were growing up in the shadows.  Allyria knew she was the accident.  She knew that she was so much younger than all her other siblings there was no way she was planned.  She joked about it with everyone except Ashara, who never seemed to find it funny.  

*

It was three in the morning, and Bran couldn’t sleep.  He just lay there, staring at his cracked ceiling, wishing that it weren’t such an effort to drag himself out of bed and do something.  Before, he’d been gone for midnight walks around the block, or even just climbed the tree in the backyard until he could get a view of the Hudson and just watch the river flow it’s way gently south.  But that wasn’t an option anymore.  Climbing, walking, running in the middle of the night, feeling concrete under his bare feet—none of that was an option anymore.

So he reached for his phone.  

_Bran Stark: You awake?_

The blue text glowed at him, so bright it sort of hurt his eyes.  Almost instantly, green text appeared.

_Jojen Reed: Yes.  What’s up?_

_Bran Stark: Bored._

_Jojen Reed: :-/  Do you have games?_

_Bran Stark: Yes.  But that’s not what I want to do._

_Jojen Reed: What do you want to do?_

Bran didn’t know how to answer, so he didn’t.  Frowning, he tucked his phone under his pillow so that he wouldn’t see it light up again when Jojen texted him again to ask what was wrong.  He went back to staring at the cracks in his ceiling.

He didn’t like his new bedroom.  It was the old guest room, which Rhaenys, Aegon, and Jon always stayed in when they visited.  The mattress was his, and the furniture, but it wasn’t  _his_  room.  It was on the first floor—not in the attic, and—worse—it faced the street such that the orange glow of street lamps covered the walls every night, keeping away the silver gleaming of the moonlight.  

Bran hated it.  Bran hated everything, but most of all, Bran hated three AM for not being fun anymore.

There was a tapping on the frame of his open window, and he sat up.  Jojen was there, and Meera, smiling at him.

"What’re you doing here?" he asked them.

"Want to go for an outing?" Jojen asked.

Bran felt a lump in his throat.  It had been so long since he’d snuck out in the middle of the night.  So very long.  

*

Of course he knew that it had gotten started. 

He’d always been an observant man, Marya always said that that was what made him a good father.  He had noticed when Devan was struggling with bullies, when Allard had been thinking about proposing, when Dale had went and bought the damn boat even though he didn’t have enough money to pay for it all just yet.  

And Stannis was his best friend.  Stannis ground his teeth and bit his lip and muttered under his breath and complained about churchgoers and how they all parked their cars like damn imbeciles.  Davos saw the way that his eyes would flicker to the Red Woman (as everyone seemed to call her) and then go back to whomever he was talking to.  Davos saw the way he listened to her, intently, attentively, and other -lys as well.  He recognized the special frown that Stannis got on his face when he  _was_  thinking about her, when he was focused on this woman and the way she’d just appeared in his life—as if the life that Stannis had led before was nothing at all in comparison.

He’d seen Stannis go into the kitchen, as tense as he’d ever been.  And he saw him come out of the kitchen and he just  _knew_.

*

"You can’t honestly think that Joff did nothing wrong though."

Tyrion wasn’t looking at him.  He was staring at a brief in a manilla folder.  It was strange to see Tyrion at work.  Usually he was half asleep on Jaime’s couch, or half-drunk in his back yard, staring at the pool as though half expecting mermaids to surface in it.

"Of course I don’t," said Jaime gruffly.  "Don’t be silly.  I’m not—"

"Well, then why are you defending him?"  Tyrion looked up and the full force of his multi-colored gaze hit Jaime harder than he was expecting.  Jaime understood suddenly how it was that Tyrion was making quite as much money as he was.  He probably terrified everyone into getting what he wanted—or got it just by sheer force of will.  You couldn’t lie to that glare, even if you wanted to.  And Jaime didn’t want to.  

Jaime didn’t like lying to Tyrion.  It left a bitter taste in his mouth.

But before he could speak, Tyrion said, “Cersei put you up to it, didn’t she?  She wants you to get me to defend him, doesn’t she?”

"Does that surprise you?  You’re very good," Jaime shrugged.

Tyrion’s eyes narrowed.  ”Cersei doesn’t trust me, and I don’t trust her.  Why do you think she would want  _me_  to get Joff off?”

"You’re a Lannister," shrugged Jaime, "She doesn’t have to explain anything to you."

"I’m a Lannister," Tyrion repeated.  "She has to explain it to me thrice over because I don’t really understand how the fuck she let this happen."

"Joffrey’s not a child anymore."

"Exactly.  Which means he’s on trial for exactly what that he committed.  And Cersei’s unconnected.  So why doesn’t she let him.  He’s  _guilty_.  Jaime—you saw the pictures of the Stark girl.   _He_  did that to her.”

Jaime felt a knot twist in his stomach.  Her body had been covered in bruises and scrapes in the police file, her lip was swollen, tear stains on her face streaking through dirt and blood.  But worst had been her eyes—blue eyes (he remembered them.  Cersei had joked once that  _Sansa_  had eyes more similar to Robert’s than any of Robert’s “children”) that looked like the sky had died.  And Jaime remembered thinking  _my son did this_.

*

It had been twenty seven years since Lyanna had left him for Rhaegar Targaryen.  Twenty seven years of smiling  and nodding whenever Ned brought up his nephew (Jon—the name that Robert had wanted to give  _his_  firstborn son because of the kindness that Jon Arryn had shown him growing up), twenty seven years of pretending that it hadn’t fucking hurt when she’d just shrugged and left and hadn’t said when she’d be back, twenty seven years of wondering what life would have been like if he’d just gone and asked her to marry him.

She was a lesbian now.  She’d stolen Rhaegar Targaryen’s wife (a thought that made Robert smile.  At least Rhaegar knew what it was like to lose someone who was supposed to love him), and they’d gone all domestic, raising three children in a big house, cooking food all the time and probably screwing up the two boys who didn’t know what it was like to have a strong man in their lives.  Ned was strong, that was true—but Ned wasn’t around a lot.   For all Robert knew, Jon was looking to  _Rhaegar_  to learn how to be a man—as if Rhaegar could teach him half of what he needed to know.

Jon should be his son.  His son.  And Lyanna shouldn’t have left him.  She shouldn’t have.  It was wrong.  If she hadn’t left him, he wouldn’t have fallen into bed with Cersei Lannister and maybe this whole mess never would have happened.  

He’d heard it said that if you love someone—let them go.  Robert loved Lyanna more than whichever idiot said that.  He wouldn’t let her go.  Not ever.

*

The lights were on in their apartment window when Asha pulled up in front of the building. She shot Alysane a text letting her know she’d be away from her phone for a while before turning off the car and making her way to the buzzer.  

"It’s me," she said into the speaker and there was no reply, only the hum of the old door mechanism and she pushed her way into the building.

Theon’s and Jeyne’s building has a lot of locks and security.  Asha was not surprised.  She heard a lot of clicks through their door as she waited for them to let her in, and found herself looking down at Jeyne.

Jeyne was a small woman, her frame too thin (Asha didn’t think she ate enough; Asha didn’t think either of them ate enough) and her hair messy.  Her face was pink and sweaty and Asha knew she’d just been standing over the stove.

"Anything I can help with?" Asha asked, but Jeyne just shook her head.  "It’s nearly ready.  Theon’s putting a cake in the oven."

"A cake?" Asha asked.

"We thought it was a night for cake," shrugged Theon as he hobbled over and gave Asha a hug.  "It’s always a night for cake."

His new teeth looked good—though they were a little too white in his mouth.  Certainly more white than the rest of his teeth, but that was because they were new, she supposed.  Or maybe there was something about the enamel.

"Everything all right?" Jeyne asked.

"Yep.  Pretty good.  New boo."

"Oh?" she asked.  "What’s she like?"  

Knowing that this was perhaps not the crowd to jump into conversation about whips and gags with, Asha replied, “Very lovely.  Things are nice so far.”

"That’s good.  It’s always nice when things are nice," she was smiling her small smile and her eyes darted to Theon, who was doing his best to quietly nudge the pair of them into the tiny living-dining room.

"What’s for dinner?" Asha asked him.

"Chicken.  And some jazmine rice."

"You spoil me, baby brother," she teased.

"I thought you spoiled me," he grinned.   She loved seeing him smile again.  Even if the color was wrong. 

*

Gendry let himself in through the back door, the way he had growing up.  He had expected the kitchen to be empty.  It was the middle of the day on a Wednesday.  He was expecting to be able drag Arya out of bed in complete peace, without having to worry about anyone hearing her shouting at him as he tugged the blankets off her.

Which, naturally, meant that he found himself face to face with Mr. Stark, who was seated at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper.

"Oh.  Sorry.  I should have knocked, I suppose…" he muttered.  Mr. Stark looked up over the rims of his glasses.  His eyes were grey, just like Arya’s.

"Did you have plans with her?" Mr. Stark asked.  He sounded surprised, and Gendry wished he didn’t.  Because him sounding surprised meant that Arya was lying about "getting out plenty" and "having lots to do so go away".  

"Sort of," Gendry said.  He shifted on his feet.  "I was going to make her go on a walk with me.  See if we could throw rocks at the trains going by, or look and see if we could feed ducklings or something.  But no…she wasn’t expecting me or anything.  She’s…"

Mr. Stark was nodding, “Evasive.  She’s being very evasive.  Even Jon thinks so.  And if she’s evasive to me—which she isn’t usually—she’s never evasive to Jon.”  Gendry grimaced.  

"So she hasn’t said anything.  About where she was?" he asked.  It wasn’t really a question.  He knew the answer.  And Mr. Stark knew that he knew the answer.

"No.  I have no idea."

Gendry was nodding because he didn’t know what else to say.  He crossed the kitchen and made his way towards the back staircase.

"You’ll tell me," Mr. Stark called after him, "if you find out? You’ll tell me, won’t you?"

"Yeah.  Yeah I will.

*

When she’d been in college, she’d been a little bit in love with Cersei Lannister.  Not a lot—just enough.  She figured it had something to do with her marvelous tits, or maybe the fact that she was perhaps the single most beautiful woman that Lyanna had seen at that point.  She’d just been tall and blonde and aloof in a way that Lyanna had never seen before, and she wore black leather the way that Lyanna wished she could, drunkenly dancing with her brother in the basement of Sig Nu.  

She was so unlike Robert, with his rough hands and his heavy muscles, a reserved smile when she approved and pursed lips when she disapproved.  Never anything excessive, everything always controlled, pristine, perfect.  She was a golden goddess, Cersei Lannister, back when Lyanna didn’t realize that a golden goddess was much more in the line of what she wanted than Robert and all his height, and his bright blue eyes.

Lyanna hadn’t seen Cersei in at least ten years—probably even longer.  She and Robert were never over at Ned’s at the same time.  She couldn’t help but find it amusing that Robert had ended up with Cersei—but she supposed so long as they had found happiness, who was she to judge?  It wasn’t as though she was jealous or anything.  She had Elia, and their children, and she didn’t need more than that—not for a second.

Because Elia was just enough of everything without holding it back.  Elia was a reserved smile, but also a grin; a quiet giggle and a belly laugh; hands clasped in front of her like some anime drawing and wild gesticulations when explaining to Aegon why he didn’t need to worry about Rhaenys going into New York alone.  

But sometimes she wondered, watching Jon and Aegon throw a baseball in the backyard, or letting Elia take her measurements for a new dress pattern she was trying, if she’d have been able to love Elia so much if Cersei hadn’t been first.  What would Lyanna have been, if Cersei hadn’t come in and shaken her up, made her see that she wanted more than what she had, make her see perfection in her her blonde curls and emerald eyes?

*

He burned. That’s what it felt like, anyway. Burning.

He wasn’t allowed to phrase it that way. Talking about fire made Mother cry and he had promised when he was five years old that he would never make Mother cry. Because making mother cry was something that Father did all the time, and something Rhaegar did sometimes. And Viserys didn’t want to be like  _them_.

But still, he burned. Because it was hell, actual hell. Dany liked to moan about how love was hard, and love was painful, and love was always somehow sadly broken. She didn’t know the fucking half of it. She just thought she did. Her first boyfriend (whom Mother had  _hated_ ) dead in a motorcycle accident, her second boyfriend being just an ass—Dany thought her luck was bad. It almost made Viserys laugh. Her luck was fine. Just fine.

"When will you find yourself a girlfriend?" Mother asked, "a nice girl who knows how good you are?" She wanted him to be happy. He knew that. Because he was the only one of her children who checked in on her, made sure that she was happy, and well, that no one was harassing her because of the shit that Father had pulled. He knew that Dany called every now and then, and that Rhaegar hardly called at all. Mother didn’t talk about it, but Viserys knew. How could he tell Mother, convince Mother that he wasn’t lonely, because he certainly couldn’t tell her that he wasn’t alone.

Because he had found a nice girl. And she loved him too. She did. She told him so when she took the Hudson Line down and he met her in Grand Central and they kissed in the middle of the station, hearts throbbing against their ribs and heat flowing into one another. Because she burned for him too, and it was the sort of fire that would ruin everything if he looked into his mother’s heavy purple eyes and said, “Rhaenys. I love Rhaenys.”

*

Walda loved the summer.  She loved sitting on the back porch in a tankini and drinking cosmos while reading Cosmo, looking for good sex tips to try out.  She didn’t find many.  Cosmo was remarkably silly with its tips.  Domeric made a point of reminding her of that every time she bought a new one.

"Don’t try anything with your teeth," he’d say with a leer on his face.  "Just don’t."  Ramsay would nod in serious agreement.

So Walda had tried a thing with her teeth.  And Roosey had liked it.  And she smirked whenever Domeric brought it up.  She  _didn’t_  try anything with ice cubes though.  That just seemed excessive.

Roose’s sons didn’t like her much.  And she didn’t care. They didn’t have to like her.  They had to put up with her.

She’d lost Ramsay from the beginning.  She wasn’t sure what she’d done.  She didn’t care.  Maybe he was nervous that she’d give Roose more sons or daughters and he would have to learn what it was like to be a grown up.  (The thought almost made her cackle like the stereotypical step-mother.  Ramsay.  A grown up.  With little siblings that he had to babysit and who wanted to crawl all over him.  She almost wished she were pregnant with quadruplets right now.)

She’d lost Domeric when she’d had the dining room painted a pastel pink.  He had liked the deep red.  She found it gloomy and she had every right to repaint her house as she liked.  Roose said he liked it, and that was all she needed.

She knew what they got up to—what Roosey and his boys got up to.  There was no way not too.  She speckled bloodstains on their shirts in places they hadn’t thought to check.  But it was honestly not that much worse than what her Father had gotten up to, so who was she to judge?

And there wasn’t anything she could do about it, except, of course, enjoy her life while it lasted.

*

"And he was never cruel to me—not actually."

"Wait…I think I’m a bit lost.  Back up a bit?"  Brienne was staring at her notepad.  "Who was never actually cruel to you?"

"The Hound."

"Ah!  There we go.  I thought we were still on Joffrey and Meryn." 

"No.  They were definitely horrible to me."

"Yeah, I was going to say—I thought these sessions had been going pretty well until you said that."

Sansa smiled a small smile, then kicked herself mentally.

"What does that smile mean?" Brienne asked quickly.  Brienne had figured out  _weeks_  ago that if Sansa smiled a small smile, she was sitting on something.  Sansa bit her lip.  ”I’m not going to let it drop.  Talk to me.”

"I had this dream," she muttered.

"About the Hound?"

"Yes.  We were playing cards and then his face melted and he was shouting at me because I was making it melt off.  He called me a bitch."

"Had he called you a bitch before?" Brienne asked carefully.

"No.  Not that word.  He’d said that I was an idiot for not going with him."

"After the fire?"

"Yes.  But he was never derogatory.  He was aggressive, but not derogatory."

"How so?"

Sansa took a deep breath, feeling oxygen swell into her body, and rush out, leaving her empty.  

"Sansa," pressed Brienne.

"He got drunk a lot—more often than the others," Sansa sighed.  "And when he was drunk, he would tell me stories.  About his brother, about his childhood.  He’d cry sometimes about it too.  But he said that if I told anyone, he’d kill me."

"I thought you said he wasn’t cruel to you," Brienne said.  Sansa was amazed how gentle she could sound, sometimes.  If Sansa had said something like that to her mother…well, she doubted very much that her mother would have said the same thing without a harsh edge to her tone.  But not Brienne.  Never Brienne.  Brienne was measured in everything.

"He never meant it," Sansa said.  "He didn’t.  No, don’t look at me that way—he wouldn’t kill me.  He…he hated them.  Hated them as much as I did.  He just…"

"It sounds to me like you’re trying to justify something to yourself," Brienne said calmly.

"I’m just not explaining it well," Sansa sighed.  "I don’t think I’m…I’m fairly sure that I’m not trying to justify anything."

"Take the time you need, then explain," Brienne said.  She was scribbling away on her yellow legal pad and Sansa was  _sure_  that her hopes of being out of therapy soon had just been dashed.

But then again, it had been a confusing dream.  And weren’t dreams supposed to be windows into your subconscious?  Maybe there was something she wasn’t letting herself think about.  But surely— _surely_  she wasn’t  _romanticizing_  what had happened, was she?  Because there was nothing  _to_  romanticize about everything that had happened.  It had all been so horrible and—

But she was supposed to be defining the difference.  She was supposed to be making Brienne understand.

"Joff," she began, "Joff didn’t know how to love.  But not only that, he seemed to think that love was a weakness in people—that it was what made them weak.  He used people’s love against them— _my_ love against me.  He almost weaponized it.  He expected people to love him and in loving him, he expected people to do things for him.  His mother, his father, his uncle, his grandfather—everyone did things for him because they loved him.

"Sandor," Brienne twitched and her pen stilled, but didn’t say a word, "he didn’t think that anyone could love him.  He thought he was a monster.  He thought that the world was a worse off place because he was in it and because his brother was in it.  And I think he was constantly trying to convince himself that it was true.  I think in saying that he’d kill me…he was trying to convince himself he was a monster.  But he wasn’t one.  He  _wasn’t_.  He was kind to me.  He called me ‘Little Bird’ and he never hurt me.  He…he…”

It was the first time in all of her therapy sessions that Sansa didn’t understand the expression on Brienne’s face.  And for one wild moment, she thought that Brienne might cry.

*

It was hard growing up with Wylla as a little sister.  Wylla was always at the center of things.  She always had opinions, and she made sure that you knew what those opinions were the second that they came into her head.  Wylla helped bring her college softball team to nationals because she was one of the few pitchers on the team who could pitch hit-less innings.  Wylla dyed her hair an electric green because she figured that she had blonde hair and she might as well, because it was easy to dye blonde hair.  (Wynafryd’s was a muddy brown, and Wylla just died over her lovely hair!)

Wynafryd though…Wynafryd was quiet.  Quieter, rather.  She’d never thought of herself as a quiet person.  She just didn’t let it all hang out the same way that Wylla did.  She could contain herself.  She  _did_ contain herself.  And, in containing herself, everyone somehow overlooked her.

And that was hard.  It was hard being outshone by your baby sister with the green hair who had taken forever to learn to talk to begin with.  She knew she shouldn’t let it bother her, that she and Wylla were different people, and that Wylla just had a different way of expressing herself and that was  _fine_.  Except it wasn’t.

Every day, she wondered if everyone wished she were Wylla.  Brave, intrepid Wylla with her green hair and her loud opinions.  And she was just Wynafryd, quiet, dependable Wynafryd, never causing any trouble Wynafryd, knowing what everyone in the family was thinking because she wouldn’t tell any of their secrets—no, of course she wouldn’t—Wynafryd.  And she knew she should be pleased with that.  That she was trusted, and loved, and relied upon.  

But falling asleep at night, Wynafryd wondered what it would be if she just disappeared for a while, if she took a job on the West Coast, or if she drove across the country, or went down to New York and clubbed all night with the college friends who were constantly trying to drag her into the City.  (“It’s so easy!  You don’t have to drive, so you can get as drunk as you like!”  Even if Metro North had derailed on the Hudson Line before.)  Maybe she should shave her head, maybe she should get a tattoo, maybe she should drop out of Grad School and become a High School art teacher like she’d wanted to before she realized that it paid shit.  Maybe she could find something, become something that was better than whatever it was that she was.

*

Brandon drank.  He drank a lot.  It’d been a long time since he’d been home.  Whatever home was.  So he drank.  

It’s hard to get over some things.  Hard to get past them.  And everyone told him he should get past them.  But he couldn’t.  So he drank, and life became a haze.

"Here is a comprehensive lissssst," he slurred at the bartender, "of things I should ‘get over.’" He hiccuped.  The bartender leaned against the bar and waited.  "What was I sssaying?" Brandon asked.

"A list of things you needed to get over?" the bartender prompted.  She was a pretty girl—blue eyed and dark haired.  But she looked a lot like Robert Fucking Baratheon, and looking like Robert Fucking Baratheon reminded him of Ned, so Brandon did his best not to think about that.

"Right," Brandon said.  "First—my brother ssstole my girlfriend.  And they’re married now.  And happy.  With happy little children.  And grandkids soon, once Robb mans up and getssss a girl.  Second—my sister is a lessssbian.  Third—my youngest brother doesn’t talk to me anymore.  Fourth—my parents are dead.  Fifth—Rhaegar Fucking Targaryen had a son with my sister.  Sixth—Robert Fucking Baratheon.  Eighth…or was it ninth…or…" His head was spinning.  And suddenly the bartender looked like Lyanna.  She looked like Lyanna with Robert’s eyes and fuck, had Lyanna had  _another_  kid while he wasn’t looking?  Because if she had fuck that.  Fuck everything—Lyanna wasn’t supposed to find some fucking girl and have fucking kids and settle the fuck down.  Lyanna was supposed to be here with him, drunk as shit, and ragging on fucking Ned for stealing fucking Cat and having happy fucking kids with her.  And Benjen wasn’t supposed to side with Ned either.  Why did everyone always side with Ned?  Why was Ned so much better than him.

He hadn’t realized he’d slipped from the bar stool until he hit his tailbone on the ground.  It hurt and he let out a “Fuck!” and he saw stars in his eyes.

"Jesus—hang on," the bartender called out and she rounded the bar and came into sight again crouching down next to him.  Brandon thought he caught a glimpse of white underpants up her skirt.  "Come on, sir.  Let me call you a cab.  Let’s get you home."

And Brandon laughed.  Because what the fuck was home?  What the fuck had home been for thirty fucking years?

*

No one was doing  _anything_  and it was driving Cersei  _mad_.  Tyrion hadn’t called to tell her anything, and, while she was sure that Jaime would be able to actually convince him to take on the case…

And Father was less than no help at all.  He still blames her for it, as if it were entirely her fault.  How was she to have known what Joff would do?  How was she to have controlled it, even if she had known?  He was a grown man, now, her baby boy with his blond curls and Jaime’s beautiful eyes.  

Jaime would never have done what Joffrey did.  He wouldn’t have.  And she wouldn’t have.  Surely, if anyone was to blame for her boy’s cruelty, it was Robert.  But no one ever blamed Robert for anything.  No one ever touched Robert.  It was as if he was guiltless in all things because everyone felt sorry for him because his little Lyanna hadn’t loved him as much as he thought she had.

She’d gotten Rhaegar, hadn’t she.  And had his son and stolen his wife and she, Cersei, had somehow thought it was a good idea to land herself with  _Robert_.  She could kick herself.

Better to have remained unmarried and had Jaime’s children as “by-blows” of some affair.  Father would have been furious though.  But what could he have done about it?  What would he have done?  Nothing.  Because Father couldn’t do anything, just as he couldn’t do anything for Joffrey right now—his own grandson, his own flesh and blood twice over.

So Cersei was going to.  She picked up her cell phone and found Sansa Stark’s phone number and pressed the little green phone button on her screen, waiting to see whether the little bitch would pick up her phone or if she would let it go to voicemail.

*

"Tommen? It’s four in the morning," Myrcella said groggily.  It had been almost a year since Tommen had called her in the middle night.  She had half-hoped that once he’d moved off campus, it would have gotten better.  That something about being in his own house with his cats and Robert that would calm him down.

"Yeah," he said, "Sorry about that.  I just…I had a nightmare."

She didn’t sigh.  She couldn’t sigh at Tommen, no matter how tired she was.  Not when she knew what his nightmares were.  ”What was it this time?”

"I don’t remember," he sounded guilty.  "I shouldn’t have called."

"Don’t be silly.  Of course you should have.  Do you remember anything?"  He usually did.  She knew he was lying.

"There was a lot of noise.  And light.  And Joff was shouting."

She made a gentle humm into the phone, covering a yawn with her hand.  ”Ser Pounce woke me up.  I was moaning in my sleep I think.  And he knows what happens then.”

"He’s a good kitty," Myrcella agreed.  "He knows what’s up."

She heard Tommen giggle into the phone.  ”Sorry for waking you.  I just…”

"It’s fine," Myrcella said soothingly.  "I’ll just stay up and go into the office early.  Lord only knows the new boss is appreciative of diligence."  That wasn’t quite true, but anything to beat Robb to the office one day.  She had no idea how he always managed to get in so early.

"You always make me feel better.  I miss you loads," he said.

"I miss you too.  When do you think you’ll visit?" she asked.

He made a sleepy sound.  ”Soon, I hope.  I don’t know.  It depends on how the research ends up going, you know.”

"Yes."  She very much did.  She’d graduated early because she’d spent her summer time on research and architecture projects.  It looked like Tommen wanted to do the same.  "Tommen?"

"Yeah?"

"He won’t hurt you.  He’s far away."

Tommen let out a shaky breath.  ”Yeah.  I know.”

*

"Wait she called you?"

"Yes."  Sansa leaned back into the couch and lifted her glass to her mouth.

"She just up and called you," said Rickon.

"Yes."

"Out of the blue."

"Yes."

"Just like that?"

"Yes."

"What did she say?" asked Bran.

"She told me I was a lying whore," said Sansa.  Rickon made and angry squawk and Bran’s eyebrows rose so high on his face that she lost sight of them under his bangs.  "She told me that if I didn’t back down straight away, there’d be hell to pay."

"As if you hadn’t already been through hell," muttered Rickon.

"What did you say?" asked Arya.  Sansa started.  Arya was sitting on the top step of the staircase, peering through the railing.  Only Sansa could see her, but Bran rolled his chair into the hallway.  

"Are you going to just sit up there?"

"I was planning on it."

"Get down here.  It’s clearly time for a pow-wow."

Arya rolled her eyes.  ”Robb’s not here. It doesn’t count if Robb’s not—”

"I have far too many chocolate chip cookies.  One of my colleagues brought them in for my birthday," Robb called as the front door opened.  "You’ll all have to help me."

"You’re birthday’s in March," Sansa said.

"Well, she was mistaken and wouldn’t take the cookies back," shrugged Robb.

"Pow-wow," Bran said sternly, glaring at Arya.  "Down.  Now."

Arya came downstairs, and climbed onto the couch next to Sansa.  

"What’s the pow-wow for?" asked Robb as he put the cookies on the coffee table and threw himself into a chair.

"Cersei Lannister called me," said Sansa.

"Oh god."

"Yes."

"I believe," said Arya, "my question still has yet to be answered."  She elbowed Sansa.  Sansa elbowed her back.

"Please tell me you told her and her precious son to eat shit and die," said Rickon.

"I most certainly did not," Sansa said, slightly stung at the concept of doing such a thing.  "I told her that, with all due respect, I would not be dropping charges and that the judicial system of New York State would determine if I was a lying bitch."

"That was probably the best way to handle it," Robb said.  

"It probably wasn’t," grumbled Rickon.  

"Well, having her get into it with Cersei Lannister  _certainly_  wouldn’t have been helpful,” said Bran, toying with a hole in his jeans’ knees.

"How do you know?"

"You can’t just run through a brick wall head first, Rickon.  It’ll hurt and end up being wildly unproductive because you won’t break the wall and you’ll probably give yourself a concussion," Bran replied evenly.

"Rick’s head is made of steel though.  If anyone could do it…" Robb grinned, reaching out and knocking his closed fist lightly against Rickon’s skull.

"Hey!" Rickon snapped, swatting at Robb.

"She’s not going to back down though," said Arya quietly.  Rickon and Robb stilled, glancing at her.  "She’s not.  She never does.  She always gets what she wants.  Remember when she had Lady put down?"

Sansa bit her lip and glanced at Arya.  ”What else can I do?” she asked quietly

Arya didn’t say a word.  She looked away from them, staring out the window into the sunset over the river.  And for a moment, Sansa was scared she would answer.

*

"Come on. Let’s go for a walk."

Arya rolled her eyes.  ”Will you just leave me be?”

"Never," Gendry replied.  "I’ll even let you wear my sweatshirt.  Come on.  Let’s go."  He pulled it up over his head and chucked it at her.  She caught a glimpse of the muscles of his stomach as his t-shirt came up briefly with the sweatshirt.

"When did you start working out?" she asked.

He snorted. “I’ve always worked out.”

"Yeah.  But you’ve got abs now."

He raised his eyebrows and smirked, and she rolled her eyes at him, tugging the sweatshirt over head just so she wouldn’t have to see his stupid face.  The sweatshirt was still warm, and it smelled like him, a little bit musky a little bit like gasoline.

"Are you still living near the Shell station?" she asked.

He gave her a funny look.  ”Yes.  Why?”

She tugged at the hem of the sweatshirt.  ”Smells like it.”

Gendry snorted.  ”You should come round sometime.  I’ve redecorated since you were last there.”

Arya bit her lip.  She really shouldn’t go.  She really shouldn’t.  She shouldn’t even go on walks with him, or let him near her.  Hell, she probably shouldn’t be here at all.  She probably should be as far as fuck away from here as she could manage.  Because she was a fucking time bomb.

"Let’s go now," he suggested.  "We can have dinner and you can make fun of the fact I can still burn water."

"You still burn water?" she let out a laugh, wishing he couldn’t make her laugh.  God, why was he like this?

"No.  I don’t.  I’m making fun of Past Gendry who didn’t know how to cook.  Present Gendry knows how to cook.  Present Gendry took cooking classes while you were away.  Present Gendry is a pretty good cook, actually."

"And what does Present Gendry like to cook?" she asked, following him downstairs.  

"Present Gendry likes stir fries.  And making grilled root vegetables.  And anything tomato-based."

"Sounds like it might be worth my time."  

"I’ve always been worth your time, Arya," he teased.

"I know. That’s the problem."

Gendry glanced down at her. “What’s the problem?”

She stiffened.  She shouldn’t have said that.  She shouldn’t have.  No—if he knew—fuck.  No she couldn’t.  But it hurt not telling anyone.  It hurt lying.

"That even if you’re fucking annoying all the time, you’re still somehow entertaining."

But it would hurt more telling the truth.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brynden, Walda, Domeric, Lyanna, Arya, Sansa, Robert A., Tommen, Ned, Catelyn, Melisandre, Joffrey, Sandor, Sansa, Elia, Jaime, Willas, Ellaria, Oberyn, Rickon, Brandon, Rhaella, Roslin, Myrcella, Aegon, Margaery, Jon, Robert, Asha, Theon, Gendry, Brienne, Tyrion, Selyse, Jeyne, Grey Worm, Missandei, Edd, Sam, Grenn, Pyp, Stannis, Davos

Domeric arrived at his father’s house to find the garage wide open and all of the junk inside it spread across the driveway. What in the…

And then he saw her. She was wearing a pink halter top again, and a handkerchief was tied around her hair as she vacuumed away at the corners of the garage, bending over so plump pale flesh popped out of the top of her jeans. He felt an angry growl in the base of his throat.

"What do we do?" hissed Ramsay, eyes wide like dinner plates.

"Leave it to me," snapped Domeric. He pulled the car up to the curb, turned it off, and got out, putting his sunglasses on has he did so. He liked wearing sunglasses when he had to deal with fucking Walda. She never cooed over how much she thought he looked like his dad then. That always made him uncomfortable. Walda was his age…and…ugh.

"What are you doing?" he called at her over the vacuum. She yelped and almost fell over. Domeric unplugged the machine and everything went quiet. Too quiet. Maybe he should have left it on to cover the conversation.

"Roosey has so much old stuff in here, I thought I would get rid of some of it." She gestured at a box very obviously labeled "Bethany" and Domeric felt his pulse shoot up.

"You are getting rid of my mother’s stuff?"

"Well, I was going to give it to you. There is no reason it should be in my house.".

"You can’t—she was—" but this was a conversation for another time. "You need to clear the driveway now. I need to get the car into the garage."

"I don’t like your tone " Walda sniffed.

"I don’t give a shit. We need to get stuff out of the trunk."

"Well, do it from the curb."

"We can’t." He did his best to make it sound significant, to make it obvious that there was a body in the trunk and they needed to get him downstairs and fast before he woke up and started making a racket.

Walda raised her eyebrows and dropped her voice. “You brought him here?” she hissed angrily, “ _Here_?”

"Yes," he replied angrily, "Dad has the best…materials, and—"

"Domeric!" Domeric heard panic in Ramsay’s voice and he whirled around. The trunk of the sedan was open and it was empty. "He’s gone!"

Domeric sprinted down the driveway, back to the car, not caring if Walda followed him or not. “What the fuck, Ramsay!” he snapped at his brother. “You didn’t fucking notice the trunk was open? How long has it been like that?” He examined the empty space. There was a pool of blood, drying, but still damp in some spots, and the plastic Chinese finger traps they had used to tie him up back there, sliced cleanly through.

"I was texting Reek," Ramsay whined.

Domeric looked up. “You were what? Are you a fucking imbecile?” Ramsay flushed but didn’t say anything. “You were supposed to leave them the fuck alone, Ramsay.”

"Yeah, but—"

"No buts, are you a moron? Are you a fucking moron? Were you, I don’t know, dropped on your head at birth?"

"I was just—"

"I don’t give a shit about your shitty fucking excuses. You were texting them even though we let them go, and you let fucking Tully escape. What do you think Dad’s going to say?"

Ramsay looked down. “He doesn’t have to—”

"Oh yes he does. Do you think it’s a good idea lying to Dad?" Domeric slammed shut the trunk of the car, and climbed back in the driver’s seat. He reached over to the glove compartment and grabbed his gun.

"Get the fuck in. We are looking for him."

*

Lyanna had never wanted a family.  At least, not a family more than she’d had growing up.  Brothers were fantastic.  But the thought of a husband and children?  Not for her.  Never for her.  A husband and children meant that you couldn’t drop everything and go to Bangkok for a week because you saw a deal through a travel agent.  A husband and children meant that you couldn’t spend a weekend in New York, mostly drunk and a little high, fucking whoever you wanted whenever you wanted and not telling anyone what you were up to.  And Lyanna liked all of those things.  Lyanna liked freedom. 

Lyanna  _had_  liked the idea of some sort of weird live-in threesome with a married couple.  Both were hot, and the kids were adorable.  (Lyanna liked kids; she just didn’t want to have them on her own.)  And that’s where the trouble started.

Because Elia was her adventure, she supposed.  That grand adventure, fleeing what was out to get you by finding the one thing that could slay it. The dream of a husband and children was meaningless…but Elia and her children was everything.  Hell, Lyanna didn’t mind Rhaegar having gotten her pregnant if it meant that she and Elia could raise her son together; she couldn’t even be bothered that he was a shitty father to Jon, because she didn’t  _want_  her son to be like Rhaegar.

And Jon…Jon was perfect, and sharing him with Elia was perfect, and watching him toddle along after his half-siblings when they’d been little was more terrifying climbing the Himalayas without a rope.  Jon was everything, he was Elia, and Aegon, and Rhaenys, and Brandon, Ned, Benjen, and her—everything that family was, everything that it had been, and everything that it could be.  

*

"Penny for your thoughts."  

Arya looked up.  She’d left her bedroom door ajar and Sansa was standing there with a pint of ice cream and two spoons.

"Or ice cream, I suppose.  If you’re not the mercenary type," Sansa said with a sheepish grin.

Arya grimaced and closed her eyes.  It was just a word, but it made her heart pause for a moment and a warm weight press against her ribs.  She forced a smile, jerked a nod, and Sansa came in, pulling open the top of the pint of ice cream.

"What are you playing?" she asked glancing at Arya’s screen.  "Is that…that’s not… _Age of Empires_?  How did you get that to work on your computer?”

"There are some hacks you can download," Arya shrugged.  "Lord knows I didn’t pay for it."  She took a spoon from Sansa and dipping it into the coffee ice cream.

"Don’t tell dad."

"I won’t."

Sansa grinned.  ”Now I know why you’re holed up in here constantly.  You’re playing games from our youth.  If I had them, I’d never leave my room either.”

Arya snorted.  ”I leave my room.”  She didn’t add ‘Gendry makes me,” which she was tempted to.  But she didn’t want to open up to the questions—“why will you leave when Gendry asks but not the rest of us?”  Gendry was different, and she didn’t want to talk about him with her family—least of all with Sansa.  Sansa, who would brighten up and ask if she  _liked_  him, and of  _course_  she liked him, he was her best friend wasn’t he—no, not  _that_ way, Arya— _like him_  like him.

"You are having an internal monologue," Sansa observed.  Arya rolled her eyes.  "I brought you ice cream.  You have to give me your thoughts.  You accepted that bargain when you took your spoon.  I don’t make the rules."

 _"I don’t make the rules," she’d said.  He’d been crying then, bleeding, and her heart was pumping blood and adrenaline and something else that she’d examine later but she needed to do this now or else she wouldn’t do it at all, and_ then _what would she do._

_Two quick shots, and he went limp._

"And now you’ve gone sad.  What did I say?" Sansa asked.  Her voice was gentle, nervous—unlike the Sansa Arya had grown up with. 

"I—It’s been a hard few years," she sighed.  She took another bite of ice cream.

"Ain’t that the truth," Sansa muttered.  She took a bite of ice cream this time, then winced, "ow—ow, brain freeze, ow.  Oh god."

"That’s what you get for biting into it like that," Arya said dryly.

"Yeah, yeah.  I know.  I’m just a stupid little girl who never learns."

They were silent a moment, and Arya knew that Sansa was nervous to ask her anything, and Arya wasn’t sure she wanted to hear Sansa’s answers to hers.  

But Sansa, it seemed was braver than she.  ”Do you think it’ll get better?  Whatever’s bothering you.”

Arya didn’t know whether to look at Sansa or to avoid her eyes completely.   _Whatever’s bothering you_. Sansa made it sound like it was something small.  She could have laughed.

"I—I don’t know if it can."

Because how do you come to terms with the fact that you hate killing people—you hate watching life fade from their eyes, watching as their skin goes from pink to white, and they go limp and boneless in front of you—but you’re really,  _really_  good at it?

*

They were neither of them rule-breakers.  They never had been.  Joffrey put too many toes over the line for Tommen to feel comfortable even trying to do anything that would make his mother angry, and Robert had been allowed to do anything, but, after a particularly nasty incident in which he had fallen off the roof, decided that the only trouble he had in the world was  caused by the fact that his mother had never given him rules, and so he made some for himself.  It was why, Robert thought, he and Tommen got on so well.  Shared priorities and all that.  The only thing worth breaking rules over were the cats.

They spent a lot of time indoors, even on beautiful summer days where the sun hit the pavement and made it seem to glow silver and, when the air was still, and heavy with rain that wouldn’t fall for another four days at least.

Robert liked it that way.  Robert, according to his therapist, was intensely codependent, and didn’t like it when  _his_  people went away.  She said it had something to do with Dad dying when he was very little, or maybe the way that Mom had raised him.  She seemed undecided.  Robert didn’t care much about what caused it—the only thing that mattered was that he and Tommen were both together, both safe.  Or at least, he could pretend, because Tommen was too much of a homebug to ditch him for other people who were probably nicer and smarter than he was, and who could go to movies with flashing lights without being worried about when he’d have to close his eyes.  Tommen said that he didn’t mind, that he liked it—just the two of them with the odd friend who came to visit.  Robert said he liked that too, but that’s not what he meant.

He liked having a friend—a friend that was really  _his_  and not anyone else’s.

*

Cat didn’t want anything big for her birthday.  Not in the gift sense—they’d stopped giving each other gifts when she was pregnant with Bran because they’d realized that with four children, they just wouldn’t have the money and the stress wasn’t worth it.  But they usually went out to dinner, and took their time having sex when they got home—candles, flowers, the whole nine yards.  But when he’d proposed going to Chico’s for dinner (Cat’s favorite restaurant—a far-too-expensive and somewhat seedy Italian place near the river) she’d just shaken her head.

"It doesn’t feel like a birthday this year," she’d sighed.  "I just…I don’t know if I’m in the right frame of mind for it."

She was, it was true, far more stressed than she’d ever been before.  Work was drowning her with problems, most of her accounts had been mismanaged and so she had to go in and fix them—and fire the people who’d mismanaged them, and hire replacements, not to mention Bran’s fall, and Sansa’s therapy, and Arya’s return.  What she really needed, Ned thought, was a spa day—but of course, she couldn’t afford to take vacation days right now, not even for her birthday.

It made him sad, though, that their little tradition of going out for dinner was not happening this year.  He liked that little tradition.  

But the solution was an obvious one. And easy to act upon.  He took a half-day, gave the kids money for a movie and spent the afternoon cooking.  And when Cat got home, neck stiff, hair puffing out of it’s neat bun in the summer humidity, she found a quiet house, a home cooked meal, and a choice of three french movies to watch while curled up on the couch with her husband.

And, of course, long, loving sex.  The long, loving sex was important.

*

"Why do you do this?"  It was an easy question to form.  All questions were easy to form, so long as you had the question in your heart.  Some disagreed with Mel on this point, but she had found, almost universally, that they were wrong.  

It was a harder question to answer.   She could see that in his eyes, or rather, in the way that his eyes dropped to his lobster bisque as if he had only just noticed it.  

"You don’t love her," she stated.  He stiffened.  

"She’s my wife."  His voice sounded uneven, unsure, but that was not a reply that was trustworthy.  

"You love her," she corrected, "But you are not  _in_  love with her.”

He grimaced and looked away, but did not reply.

"Why have you brought me here?" Melisandre asked, crossing her legs and feeling the tip of her shoe rub against his pant leg.  "Is this a date?  Or an apology?  Or both?  Or neither?"  She was met with only a stony silence.  "You don’t trust yourself to answer.  You fear the pain of the truth and the wrath of God.  So you sit here and make me guess until I guess correctly."

He sighed, and took a sip of soup.

"I’m not guessing," she said quietly.  "I know why.  And I cannot tell if you are a good man with a despicable soul, or a despicable man with a good soul."

"I swore vows to my wife," he said at last.  "To love and honor and cherish her.  I can do none of these things.  What does that make me—a despicable man or a despicable soul?"

"Do you love me?" she asked.

His eyes jerked up and met her, wide and blue and scared and she knew the answer—and, more importantly, she knew that he knew that she knew.

*

Joffrey always told himself it was because of the color of her hair.  It was not blood-red, no, more bronze like a penny, but redheads always made him think of blood.  And when she’d had her period, blood on her cunt had always been fascinating to him.  She’d never wanted him to look at it like that—she’d always been more resistant then, but he’d ignored that.

He remember being shocked when he’d learned that blood wasn’t red when it was inside you—that that was iron rusting in your blood.  Blood should be blue, like your veins, like Sansa’s eyes, or the Hudson on a clear day.  He couldn’t say that either, though.  But Sansa was blood—outside and in.

*

There’s a picture taped to her mirror, of her and her siblings in the park, lying in the sunshine. Bran’s back wasn’t broken and his legs were muscled from hiking and biking, Arya had a big grin on her face, Rickon was rolling around like a dog, and Robb was wearing big aviator glasses and a scowl, as though he was, to quote Dad, ‘too cool for school.’  Sansa loved that picture, loved everything about it, the sunlight, the obvious peace on all of their faces, the youthful joy of summer sun.

She could never recognize herself when she looked at it, though.  She was the only one sitting up, her arms curled around her tucked knees, grinning at the camera.  The Sansa in that picture was…different.  There was something innocent about her, innocent and optimistic, and though her face was the same, Sansa couldn’t fathom that expression ever crossing her face again, and not just because she’d realized in college that grinning like that was to the detriment of her nose.

Sometimes, when the sun was strong in the late afternoon, she would try grinning at herself in the mirror, but it was never just right.  Something about her eyes, maybe, or her cheeks?  She couldn’t tell.  The muscles just didn’t seem to want to move that way anymore, and she would stop, trying not to let that twinge of disappointment expand.

Sandor had hated mirrors—hated them.  At first, she’d thought it was just because he didn’t like looking at his burns too closely. She couldn’t blame him that.  She had scars she’d prefer not to ever see again.  But it was more than that—he’d hated them for everyone, had mocked her when she’d twisted in front of the mirror in the motel room, making sure that her dress fit her properly and covered the bruises on her legs.   “What does it matter what you see?” he asked, “You’ll know what you’re hiding.  You’ll always know.”  She had called him horrible for saying such a thing and he’d replied with words she couldn’t quite remember, but they’d been rude and harsh then too.  But now, when she looked at her own sad, pale, face next to that of her tanned eighteen year old self, she realized it almost without knowing that she was thinking it at all.    _He_ _was right_ , she thought, and turned away,  _mirrors are lies.  They show you what you what you look like, not what you are._   

*

everything was so hot—so wet, air in his throat dry but skin damp from sweat humidity sweat blood sweat.  

a place to hide, he needed—a place to hide, a secret place, somewhere they wouldn’t think—looking for him.  they were still looking for him—and the air sometimes went out of focus like electricity crackles across his eyes

feet hurt, feet in pain, feet bleeding through broken shoes, blisters forming because of the wet against the leather needed to sit down couldn’t sit down, couldn’t stop running not until safe—

no where safe, no where good—no where he could hide.  cat’s children were at home, couldn’t put cat in danger.  lysa sold her house.  edmure in europe,

edmure in europe, his house would be empty, a place to hide a place to go, a place to stop the bleeding a safe place—

find a pay phone—make sure no one’s there, call and make sure the house is empty—not far from here, he can get there if he just doesn’t stop he can’t let himself stop if he stops he’s dead.

*

"You haven’t heard from him, have you?"  She knew he wouldn’t answer.  None of them ever did.  Sometimes it infuriated her, sometimes it broke her heart.

"No.  Not in a while."  She knew when Jaime lied.  He pushed his sound forward a bit so that it went off his hard pallet only.  She’d noticed it when she and Rhaegar had been engaged, and Jaime had promised her that he wasn’t dating anyone and didn’t want to when she’d suggested that he get out there and find a girl. 

"And you don’t know how to reach him?" she tried.

"No.  He doesn’t do cell phones.  Sometimes he calls from a motel, or something.  But never actually for that long, and never from the same phone number."

_He probably has an iPhone and a twitter account and I just don’t know it_ , she thought.  She couldn’t blame him wanting to keep his distance from her and Lyanna…but from his children?

Jon had never known his father.  And Aegon was chomping at the bit to meet Rhaegar.  Rhaenys had fleeting memories, but she spent enough time with Viserys down in New York to keep her curiosity about her father’s family somewhat satisfied.  Aegon and Jon had never shown the same interest.  Funny—Aegon spent time with her nieces and nephews, and Jon spent time with Lyanna’s.  It was like the three of them had each picked a family from their strange—

"Elia?"

"Sorry.  My mind was wandering," she said.

"Have you been all right lately?" Jaime was asking.

"Decent.  Can’t complain too much.  I sold a few paintings last week and have a show coming up."

"And you and Lyanna—"

"Happy," she cut him off.  She knew these were Rhaegar’s questions.  They always came up, whether she was talking to Jaime or Arthur or Oswell.

"Good—good.  Glad to hear it."

"I should go," she said.  She always did, right after Rhaegar’s questions.  "But if you hear from him, tell him Jon’s birthday is coming up, please."

"Will do."

His voice was hard and slightly forward, and she sighed as she hung up her phone.  It was just too damn easy to tell when Jaime Lannister was lying through his teeth.

*

"We all have that one ex," Ellaria said, teasing him.  "Come on now.  We each shared ours."

Willas tried to twist away, but Oberyn crawled over him and lay his head right in the middle of Wilas’ chest.  ”If I can tell you about the Nun who I seduced and then left me with her daughter while she returned to the cloth, you can tell me yours.”

"You  _like_  your daughter,” Willas pointed out.

"Tyene is a darling," Oberyn agreed.  "But you’re being evasive.  And you know what we do to evasive boys like you."  His hand drifted purposefully down Willas’ side, fingers drumming, threatening a tickle.

Willas grimaced and sighed.  ”A girl I dated in Grad School, all right?   Nice, and lovely, and I thought we’d get married.”

"What happened?" Ellaria asked.

"She…I don’t know.  It’s hard to explain," Willas tried, but they both just sat their, waiting.  Oh, he didn’t want to tell this story.  He really,  _really_ didn’t.  Not least because it wasn’t fair to  _her_.

"She was raised separately from her dad’s family.  Her parents separated when she was really young.  And she…I don’t know.  She met them at last, after a long time.  Up in New York.  And they got on really well.  Like  _really_ well.  She had an uncle who was only a few years older than her, and an aunt who was  _younger_  than her for Christ’s sake.  That family was fucked up on so many levels—her grandfather—” he stopped.  He didn’t have to tell them about Rhaenys’ grandfather.  They didn’t need to know that.

"Anyway—I was getting ready to propose to her and she just gets…distant all of a sudden.  And she spends all her time on the phone with her new uncle.  Not that he  _was_ new.  Just new in her life.  And…and when I asked she said no.  She said she couldn’t, because she wasn’t in love with me anymore.”  He was breathing heavily and his eyes were stinging. 

"I’m so sorry," Ellaria said, rubbing his arm.  That was kind of her, really.  Sweet.  "That must be horrible."

"It was," he said.  And he felt bitterness rise in his throat—a stronger bitterness than he’d felt over Rhaenys in a while.  Later, when the other two were asleep, he’d feel guilty about what he said next.  The next day, for the next week, he’d feel horrible, because what if they ever met her—it wasn’t fair.  Those thoughts, however, were far from his mind when he opened his mouth.  "But we went our separate ways.  I came to Paris; she started fucking her uncle."

*

Rickon hated being young. He hated it—hated it more than he’d ever hated anything in his life.  He hated that they all had their secret looks, their “oh yes, I understand” because they all could understand because they’d been around longer.

He had had that with Bran, once.  But then Bran had gone off to college and it had been just him in the house with Mom and Dad.

When Arya and Sansa came back, they were even worse—because apparently going missing makes you clam up around everyone unless someone else had been magically missing too.  Robb was too old—all working and everything.  He’d been old when Rickon had been a child.  He hardly felt like a brother—not the way that Bran had.  He had always seemed like Jon—a cousin of some sort, except around more often and with more annoying friends.

Rickon had his soccer friends.  Rickon had his gaming friends from his MMORPG guild.  Rickon even got on well with some of his coaches and hoped to get recruited for college.  But family…Rickon had always managed to feel left out of that.  Even Mom and Dad had had four children before he’d come around.  They just didn’t seem to stress out about him—and especially not when Sansa, Bran, and Arya had all had their shit happen.

So he was on his own.

And that was fine.  That was more than fine.  He saw Arya doing it just fine, playing games and sports and laughing with friends who weren’t family and so maybe it would all be even better than fine because if Arya could do it, if Arya could get back to that, it  _surely_  couldn’t be  _that_  hard for him, right?

Sometimes he wanted to ask her.  Sometimes he just wanted to know how she managed to be so…he didn’t know what the word was.  But he didn’t know how to ask that question, any of those questions, so he just ended up punching her lightly in the shoulder and making fun of volleyball because a game where you can’t kick?  Really?  What’s the point of that.

And maybe, he hoped, he wanted to believe, he saw a flash of recognition in her face—some indication that she knew he wanted to know, and maybe, one day, she’d tell him.

*

The world wasn’t meant for fairy tales. That’s what her mother had always said growing up. Nothing was perfectly good in this world, nothing was perfectly evil either. Everything was something in between.

Sitting with Brandon in the hospital, though, while a doctor told him he needed to stop drinking or his liver would give out, watching tears fill his eyes and the way he refused to look at her, at Ned, at Benjen, the way his face grew pale which threw cuts from a bar fight into sharp relief on his face, was what made her realize her mother’s words weren’t just meant for everyone else—they were meant for her children too.

"There are some good rehab programs I know of," Ned said quietly when the doctor left the four of them alone.  "I was looking into them in case…yeah.  Well.  There are some good ones."

She watched Brandon avoid Ned’s eyes.  She wondered if Ned knew that Brandon couldn’t look at him ever since Cat.  Surely he must—it was so obvious.  And yet sometimes, Ned was remarkably blind to the things going on around him.

"You need a place to stay?" Benjen asked.  "I’ve got room at my house.  Janos just moved out, so I’ve got a spare bed until I find a roommate."

But she knew that Brandon would say no.  Brandon didn’t like being tied down.  He was more likely to go find Bethany and see if she’d step out on her husband for a while—or maybe he would not give a fuck-all about whatever the doctor said, drink himself into oblivion until he was stone cold dead.

"Brandon," she whispered and reached for his hand.  "Please, just—"

But Brandon shook his head, and she saw how blank his face was.  

It terrified her.

*

There was an old fire place in the living room of Rhaella’s Park Avenue apartment. When she and Aerys had moved there from Bayonne, it had been one of the realtor’s selling points.  ”You can make s’mores in the comfort of your own living room, or cozy up under a blanket and watch television, or even just have a roaring fire during your Christmas party.”  

She had been excited about it then.  She liked the idea of curling up with a book and a mug of cocoa and a fire crackling in the hearth while Rhaegar practiced his harp in the next room over and Aerys was out.  Aerys was always “out” in her daydreams—at work, or at the grocery store, or meeting with Tywin to discuss some sort of something that they would condescendingly say she “wouldn’t understand.”  That was all right though.  She preferred being alone in her daydreams.  Let the boys play with their dreams of glory and global economic domination.  She’d read  _Persuasion_ again and pray that Bonifer would leave the service and write her a long and passionate letter the way Captain Wentworth did—the way that all of Austen’s heros seemed to do…

She hated that fireplace now, and the only reason she hadn’t had it smashed and replaced with an aquarium was that the co-op board wouldn’t allow it.  She didn’t understand why.  She imagined it was out of spite.  Aerys  _almost_  burning down the building did that.  For  _months_ after he’d been sent off to confinement, she’d caught whispers in the mail room about how everyone hoped she would just  _move_.

But the truth was Rhaella didn’t want to move—Rhaella was scared to.  Not because of Aerys—no.  He was away for good now, and those threats—a lighter pressed against her flesh with a manic gleam in those deep violet eyes, newspapers rolled and lit like torches that burned faster than they should too close to the door to Viserys’ bedroom—would never come to pass.  But as horrible as those memories were, they didn’t make her want to leave.  It was a nice apartment, near the 86th Street express stop, and she didn’t have the emotional energy, frankly, to find a realtor to sell the damn thing and find another space.  The next one would be smaller, too, and sure—she didn’t have to house Rhaegar’s harp anymore, and Daenerys had taken some of the furniture when she’d moved out, and Viserys was around often enough, but never in his bedroom which was now dusty like Rhaegar’s and Daenerys’ because why make the cleaning lady go in there to dust when no one went in?  Rhaella liked the huge apartment, bare as it was.  Perhaps because it was bare.  Aerys had never liked wide, open spaces.

*

There was blood everywhere when she let herself into Edmure’s apartment and for a moment, she wished she’d paid attention to her half-sister’s advice that keeping a gun in her purse was never a bad idea. 

"What the—"  She kept the door open behind her—not sure if she should just turn around and leave, or if she should phone the police.  She reached into her purse for her phone and then something launched at her, grabbing at her wrist and knocking her phone clear across the room.

She shrieked, her skin stinging for a moment beneath the stranger’s grip  before sweat and blood let her pull loose.  She backed out towards the door, but the stranger slammed it shut behind her.

"Who’re you?" he grunted.

"Who are you?" she gasped back at him.  His face was dirty and blood-covered and she smelled something stale in the air between them.  She couldn’t breathe.  

"Who are you?" he repeatsedand his hand was on her wrist again, twisting and she cried out.

"Roslin," she yelped.  "I’m Roslin.  Edmure’s fiancée."

He let go of her hand at once and backed away, muttering, “Oh.  Sorry.”

"Sorry?" she snapped, not even bothering trying to sound calm.  " _Sorry?”_

"Didn’t think you’d be here," he said, sinking to the ground.  "I needed a place to hide—a place too," he gulped.  And suddenly, she realized he had Edmure’s eyes.

"You’re—you’re Edmure’s uncle.  The one who’s missing," she said slowly.

"Yes," he said simply.  His skin was ashen, his grey hair lank and his eyes were drooping.

Feeling her heart throbbing in her chest, she put her purse on the hall table and closed the door behind her more firmly.  Then she crossed to him.  ”Here, let me help you up,” she murmured, trying to sound as collected as possible.

"Roslin," he said, sounding suddenly desperate, "You can’t tell anyone that I’m here.  Can you keep a secret?"

She almost laughed.  With her father dead now, who else could she keep a secret from?

But she nodded and he seemed to lose all life, sinking into obvious relief.  

*

"What are you up to?"  Arya was leaning against the door of the laundry room, a lollipop poking out of one side of her mouth.

"Sorting laundry.   What does it look like I’m doing?" Sansa asked.

"You don’t have to be snippy.  Want help?"

"Sure."

Arya dropped her backpack with a thunk (what was in there?) and came over to stand by the dryer.  

"You know," she said as Sansa dropped a pile of clothing in front of her, "There are many things I am willing to do to contribute to this household—but sometimes I wonder at the fact that what I end up doing is sorting out whether it’s Dad’s, Bran’s, or Rickon’s underwear.  Thank god Robb moved out."

"You just felt uncomfortable with his silk boxers," snorted Sansa.

"And you didn’t?"

"Better than Rickon’s lucky—"

"Don’t even say it!  We still have to deal with that!" Arya practically wailed, and Sansa grinned.

"But you see what I mean?"

"Shut up.  Alternatively—how does Mom put up with any of us?  I would have flown to Tahiti and had tropical drinks that were heavy on the booze ages ago."

"Is that where you were?  Tahiti?" Sansa teased.  Arya bit her lip.  

"Not quite.  I wish."

"Same," sighed Sansa, suddenly serious.  "Same."

They were silent for a moment.  Then Arya took a deep breath.  ”It wasn’t a good place—where i was.  Not the same kind of bad as you, but it wasn’t…I don’t know…you know what I mean?”

Sansa nodded.  ”I know exactly what you mean.”  She bumped Arya’s hip with hers, and Arya bumped her back.

*

"What are you doing here?"  It was hard to keep the astonished grin out of her voice when he saw her leaning against her car, his silvery blonde hair shining in the sunlight.  

"I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d take you out to lunch," he said.

"You don’t have a car," she pointed out, stepping in and giving him a quick hug.

"All right—I figured you could take me out to lunch.  And then I’d pay.  The me paying bit is important."

"Sounds like a plan—get in," she said.

"So—what brings you back to town?" Myrcella asked once they were both  buckled in and on the road.  She didn’t have to ask what kind of food he had in mind.  They always ended up at the same shitty Indian place when Aegon was back.

"Other Mom’s birthday," he said.  "You’re coming, right?"

Myrcella nodded.  ”Let’s not even begin to discuss the family negotiations about who’s attending that one,” she sighed.  ”I was a safe bet, though.”

"Is your mom coming?" Aegon was trying to sound as though it were a normal question, whose answer wouldn’t possibly destroy the world at worst, or result in fist-fights at best.

"She has a meeting with Grandfather and Uncle Tyrion about Joff’s case," Myrcella said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.  Aegon nodded, keeping his face perfectly neutral.  Then—

"How’ve you been?  How’s the fancy architecture gig?"

She rolled her eyes.  ”You wouldn’t even begin to understand if I  told you.”

"Probably not," he agreed, "But I get points for asking, right?"

She elbowed him full in the ribs and kept driving, glad that he wasn’t pressing it at all, because how on  _earth_  could she explain that she hadn’t focused on her projects in what felt like ages because she was too distracted by the line between Robb’s shoulders and his hips.  Even if she could—like hell would she give Aegon that piece of ammunition.

*

"I’m the only one who hasn’t met him."

Margaery glanced up from her laptop.  The man sitting across the communal table from her was staring fixedly at his computer screen, as though willing it to burst into flames.  Then, he furiously hit delete until whatever sentence he had just read aloud to himself was gone.

He sighed and threw himself back in his chair, crossing his arms and frowning.  Then, clearly still agitated, he ran his hands through his hair.

"Want to talk about it?" she asked.  She couldn’t help herself, really, and she didn’t understand why northerners were so cold and distant and never seemed to ever want to talk to one another.

He looked up at her with big grey eyes as if he’d never seen another human being before, much less one who was sitting across from him, smiling, and drinking an iced mocha.

"Not really," he said gruffly.

"Suit yourself," shrugged Margaery, returning to her computer and her design project.

They sat in silence for a few minutes.  Periodically, he would type loudly on his computer, then delete it with a huff.  ”It’s a project for my writing class—about my dad.”

"Oh?" she asked, looking up again.

"Yeah.  I’ve never met him.  I’m the only one of my siblings who hasn’t.  He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about me."

"I’m sorry about that," she said.  "That sounds unpleasant."  

"Yeah—well.  Yeah."  He goes back to typing.

"Does he give a rat’s ass about your siblings?" she asked.  

He laughed bitterly, shaking his head.  ”He’s kind of a fucker, my dad.”  He went back to writing, and Margaery watched him for a few moments as he clenched his jaw and typed away.  She wanted to think of something to say, the perfect consolation, or at least, the question that would lead her to know more about what he was typing because there was something so curious about him simultaneously distant and difficult to understand, but also so very familiar—almost too familiar.  But she couldn’t and in the end said nothing.

*

"What are you  _doing_ , Robert?”  The nerve of him—the very nerve of him!  He wasn’t supposed to—they had rules, they’d made them ages ago, her and Ned, and Robert had agreed to them because he had apparently seen some sort of reason he wasn’t seeing now.

"Hullo Ly-" he hiccuped, "-anna.  Happy birthday!" he hiccuped again.

Lyanna crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at him.  ”You are  _not_ allowed to be here  _drunk_ , Robert.  Come on.”

“‘m not  _that_ ,” he hiccuped again, “drunk.”

Her eyes narrowed.  ”You are very drunk, and you’re upsetting my wife.  Now will you please go and sit out in the front yard until you can see straight?”

Bad enough that he was drunk in her house—worse that it was her damned birthday, and everyone was in the livingroom talking and laughing loudly and she was stuck here with her  _ass_  of an ex (yes—she still thought of him as an ex. They’d never transitioned well to friendship.) trying to convince him not to be drunk and disorderly.  Lyanna could take him drunk and disorderly—Brandon had trained her ages ago how to handle a big drunk.  But Elia would purse her lips and frown and not say a word but Lyanna would know that she was upset and Lyanna didn’t want Elia to be upset on her birthday.

"Have a beer with me," he cajoled and she was tempted to grab a bottle and smash it over his head.  Instead, she turned into the living room and marched over to Ned. 

"Will you take Robert in hand?" she hissed.

Myrcella looked up from her conversation with Robb and Aegon.  She stood quietly and slipped into the kitchen.  Aegon rolled his eyes.  ”Is he drunk, then?” he asked.

"Yes," said Lyanna through gritted teeth.  "Don’t tell mama," she said.

"Like I’d ruin her mood," said Aegon, glancing over at Elia, who was talking animatedly with Catelyn.  He turned to ask Sansa a question, and Robb quietly got to his feet, stretched and followed Myrcella into the kitchen.

Lyanna raised her eyebrows for a moment watching as he went.

"They’ll take care of him," Ned said, reaching out and rubbing her on the shoulder.  "It’ll be fine."

"It makes me uncomfortable," Lyanna hissed at him.

"I know, I know.  But the kids get along."

They did, Lyanna sighed, reaching for a bottle of summer cider.  But she wondered sometimes if that was worth it.

*

_I’m annoyed Reek, and you know what happens when I’m annoyed._

Theon had read the text at least four times, and each time his eyes landed on the word  _Reek_  his heart rate tripled.  He was just playing—he had to be.  They’d made a deal—Asha had worked it all out—he wasn’t supposed to go near them, he was supposed to leave them alone or else there would be trouble, Asha would make sure there was trouble.  The agreement hadn’t been broken—Asha wouldn’t have broken it, and he and Jeyne hadn’t said anything, hadn’t done anything, and god only knew how hard it was to keep everything a secret from doctors who wanted to know details, but he’d lied because he’d had to lie because if he hadn’t lied, then Ramsay would know and send him a text message that read  _I’m annoyed Reek, and you know what happens when I’m annoyed._

Theon’s hands were trembling so hard that he almost dropped his phone.  It was hard holding his phone anyway—missing fingers did not make life easy by any means, but he’d worked around it fine until now, but if his hands were shaking, oh god, his hands were shaking and his blood was cold and was it even pumping, he felt his heart pumping hard but if it was pumping hard and he was cold, didn’t that mean that his blood was gone, or broken, or maybe he’d never grown any back after Ramsay had siphoned some off to go into a bucket and—

No.  No.  This wasn’t happening.  It couldn’t happen.  He wouldn’t let it happen because he’d die rather than let it happen all over again.  

So he called Asha.

"Baby brother, I’m a bit tied up, can I call you later?"

He heard a giggle in the background, and Asha hissing a “hush” at someone.

"Asha—He texted me.  He’s—he’s…"  He didn’t know what else to say, but he didn’t have to say anything else.

"The fuck?" Asha yelped.  "What did he say?"

"That he was annoyed and…and…"

"Did he threaten you, Theon?" Asha’s voice was hard like steel, and he remembered a time when he could do that too, but he couldn’t do it now.  Right now, all he could do was sit down on his couch and fight back tears because god, this couldn’t be happening.

"Theon?"

"He said he was annoyed and that I knew what happened when he was annoyed."

"I’m going to fucking gut him.  Are you at home?  I’ll be there in ten."

"Yes," Theon said.  "Stay on the line?"  He didn’t even bother trying to sound calm, because what good was calm?  

"Of course." 

*

"Hey, where are you?"

"Are you calling me?  Has the world ended?"

"Shut up.  Desperate times call for desperate measures."

"Well, excuse me while I run out to the store to prepare for the apocalypse.  Who would have thought that you would be the—"

"I said shut up.  where are you?"

"At home watching  _Lost_.  Why?”

"I am coming over."

"Oh.  Ok.  Let me put on pants."

"I’m at my aunt’s so it’ll be a few minutes.  I need to convince my dad to let me take his car."

"Why are you ditching your aunt’s?"

"I swear to god, you would have bolted ages ago."

"So?"

"It’s her birthday, right?"

"You’re leaving your aunt’s birthday party?"

"Shut up and let me tell the story, will you?"

"Sorry—sorry.  Go on."

"It’s her birthday, and everyone’s being all cuddly and snuggly and I just…I can’t be around it."

"Why not?"

"I just can’t.  It’s making me nervous."

"Nervous?  How so."

"It just is."

"Yeah, but—"

"Look, put on pants and I’ll be over soon, ok?"

"Yeah.  Sure."

"Bye."

"Arya?"

"Yes?"

"I’m glad you called.  You can call, you know.  When you’re…whatever you are."

"Oh stop being a sentimental butthead."

"Never.  See you in a few."

*

When she had been five years old, she had gone over to her cousins’ house to learn that Gregor had stuck Sandor’s head into the barbecue unit and melted half of his face off.  Sandor’s face had been covered in bandages, white bandages on the surface, but if you looked closely enough at them you could see that there was pus oozing through some of the edges.  She’d been afraid of those bandages, and afraid of the way that Gregor laughed whenever Sandor walked into things because his eye was covered by linen.  When they’d driven back down to North Carolina, she’d asked her dad if they had to go back.  

"They’re your cousins, Brienne. Mom would want them to be a part of your life." And they had gone back every summer for a week until she was eighteen and went to college and started having things to do in the summer.  

Part of her wondered if it wasn’t her cousins that made her want to go into psychotherapy to begin with.  Sandor—who was so clearly fucked in the head from having Gregor as a brother—and Gregor…Gregor who was…well she almost didn’t want to think about it.  When she had grown up a little bit, she had started spending a lot of time with Sandor, going swimming together and going on walks and generally doing things that would take them away from Gregor.  He had been kind to her—in his own way.  Brutally honest, at times, and in that brutal honesty—harsh, but he’d been protective of her too.  In his own way was the way to think about Sandor.  Because from the outside it was easy to think he was so like his brother.  But Brienne knew better, and wished the world did too.

She hadn’t seen Sandor in years, certainly not since she’d gone into her Ph.D. program.  They’d stopped having things to talk about well before then.  She had his cell number programmed into his phone, and sent him texts on his birthday that he never responded to.  Part of her wondered if he’d changed numbers a while back, but she never checked.  Who could she check with, after all?  Sandor’s father was gone now, and if she didn’t have his number, she doubted that Gregor would.  And she very much hoped that Gregor had lost her number when he’d changed phones at some point.

It was the first time in years that she wanted to text him about something substantial.  And she knew she shouldn’t—she knew it violated all sorts of codes and she could get sued so hard if she did, but she had to—because the curiosity was killing her and if he’d been there, if he’d done his best to—

Her fingers hovered over his name in her phone.  Then she hit the dial button.

*

"Selyse?"

Tyrion found it almost hard to believe the phone number on his screen until he heard her voice replying.

"Hello—um.  Is this a bad time?" 

He sat down in his chair and leaned back.  It was a good chair—nice leather, but sturdy in a way that he didn’t often find in desk chairs.  

"You’ll be taking me away from the worst case I’ve ever had to work, so not at all.  What can I do for  you?" 

Selyse Baratheon was that family member who only ever called you if someone died, and who you often forgot was actually related to you.  Whenever she did crop up in his life, it usually served as a reminder that Robert’s family was still on this earth, and therefore should supposedly merit some attention.  But usually it was Stannis who called him.  He only had Selyse’s number because of some weekend vacation at a cabin in the Adirondacks that Cersei had insisted everyone come to.

"I was wondering if you could recommend…recommend a lawyer.’

Tyrion’s eyebrows shot up, and he was glad she couldn’t see him.

"A lawyer?  What sort of lawyer?"

"I want to have a…a contract examined."  She was doing her best to give him no information at all.  He would have felt bad for her, asking the questions, except that—

"Well, what sort of contract is it?  I know some who are better at different sorts than others."

He could hear Selyse grinding her teeth and he wondered if she’d picked up that habit from Stannis.  Then,

"My pre-nup."

Tyrion almost dropped his phone.

*

Cat was quiet on the car ride home, her fingers laced through Ned’s as he drove. Sansa was listening to music, Rickon and Robb were arguing loudly about the Yankees, and Bran was texting.

"Where do you think she went?" Cat asked Ned quietly.  Arya had disappeared halfway through the evening, taking the keys to Ned’s subaru and driving off into the night, leaving the rest of them with the min-van.

"She said she was going over to Gendry’s for a while," he replied.  "Wanted to watch a movie or something. I don’t know."

"You don’t think she’s mad at Lyanna, do you?"

"She couldn’t be mad at Lyanna if she tried.  They’re too alike," said Ned.

"I know."  Catelyn did know.  Lyanna had babysat all of her children, but it was Arya who had clung to her the most.  Arya had taken to dressing like Lyanna when she was ten, and taking Lyanna’s word for gospel, and saying she loved Jon more than she loved her  _real_  brothers, and asking if she was quite sure she was Catelyn’s child, because she didn’t look like Catelyn—she looked like Jon and Lyanna.  And it was true.  When they had stood next to each other that night, it was like seeing a mirror image.  ”Still—I worry.”

"I wouldn’t worry about Lyanna and Arya."

"What would you worry about then?" 

She hadn’t meant to ask it.  She knew that Ned worried about Arya, that he was glad she was running around with Gendry again, that even though she was home—safe and sound like Sansa—she spent all of her time in her room when growing up it had been hard to keep her in the house.

Ned didn’t reply, though.  Ned was her rock, her steadiness—solid and loving and always there for her.  He knew how to calm her nerves in ways that no one else did, and he knew how to make her forget what was even causing her to be uneasy.  But Ned didn’t say a word and if anything, that made Catelyn even more afraid.

*

Asha was out of the car before Jeyne had even turned it off, hurrying up the garden path and opening the front door to the house. Jeyne helped Theon hobble after her as quickly as they could, her overnight bag over one shoulder.  Asha didn’t even want to begin thinking about how ashen they both looked.  Theon had looked as though he would be sick the entire ride over, and Jeyne’s face had been contorted with pain. 

She let the two of them past her, and then slammed the front door shut, locking it three times, even sliding the deadbolt she had never once used so that it would keep the door from swinging in.

"What now?" Jeyne asked.  

"The basement," Asha said.  It locks from down there, too.  And there’s a storm-door, but you can’t open it from the inside.  There’s a spare bed and—"

But Theon was shaking his head, his whole body was trembling.  ”No.  No basements.  No.  Not—”

"All right," Asha said quickly.  She wanted to reach out and grab his arm, help him calm down, be still, but Theon didn’t like it when people touched him without warning.  "All right.  You all take my room upstairs.  I’ll stay down here and make sure no one comes in.  It’s not perfect, but it will do until we can figure out a better plan."

Jeyne was nodding, biting her lip.  Then she threw her arms around Asha.  ”Don’t let him in,” she whispered, squeezing Asha so tightly she felt as though her ribs were breaking.  ”Don’t let him—please.”

"I won’t," she said.  She helped the two of them up the stairs, showed them where she kept the towels, showed them how to use her TV (not that she dreamed they’d watch it, but she hoped—hoped that they would try and distract themselves, that Theon would stop shaking and his skin would regain some of its color…)

When they were upstairs, tucked away in her bed, Asha scrolled through the contacts on her phone until she saw the number she was looking for—the name of the guy who had known what had happened to her dad.

"Hello?" he sounded groggy, but he picked up.

"I need a favor."

She heard a crack of thunder, the sudden patter of rain outside.

*

It had taken all of her skill to get Grey out of the house.  ”No one will be out—it’s late at night.”  ”You can’t honestly expect it to be any less humid outside than it is inside.  It might even be breezy.” “Just for a few minutes—come on.”  She wasn’t sure which of these arguments, if any, had persuaded him, but they’d left everything inside except the house keys and walked down to the park.

The park was empty.  It almost always was after dark, unless some of the local teens decided to hotbox one of the play-caves.  Sometimes there were people walking dogs, but not usually past eleven. 

When thunder rumbled, Missandei turned her head up to look at the sky.  ”Should we turn back?”

"Nah," he said.  "It’ll be fine."

As if the heavens had heard him, there was a strike of lightning and suddenly rain was pouring down in sheets.  Missandei squealed, her hand flying to her hair.  ”Shit!”

"Oops," said Grey, but he didn’t sound sorry at all.  On the contrary, he had a broad grin on his face.  

"Sure, it’ll be fine," she growled, rolling her eyes.  Her shirt was already soaked through.

"Good thing we didn’t bring electronics," he shrugged.

"I’m heading home," she snapped.

"This," he pointed out, "was your idea.  And besides, it’s fun to be out in the rain."

She stared at him.  Had he just said  _fun_.

"And on top of all that," he said, leaning closer to her and for just a moment, she thought that her heart would stop beating.  "I have your keys," and he swiped them from her, turned tail, and sprinted clear across the park.

"Grey!" she shrieked, taking off after him, kicking off flip flops that were only sliding around under her feet.  He was laughing like a child, turning briefly to backpedal away from her, as if to make sure she were following him, before he turned around again and ran even faster.  "Oh, I’m going to  _kill_  you!”

"You’ll have to catch me first," he sang over his shoulder.

She wasn’t sure exactly how she caught him, or how long after the initial stealing of the keys it happened.  But when she tackled him, she knew that her tshirt was ruined, covered in mud and muck, that her knees were bruised, and that he was laughing even as he twisted trying to keep her keys away from her.

*

"Where the bloody hell have you been?"  Jon was completely soaked when he arrived, tugging his shirt repeatedly away from his chest.  He didn’t like the way that it just clung to him, making him look like he’d just gotten out of some idiotic photoshoot or something.  He didn’t like the way the girls in the bar stared at him and his muscles.  So what—he had muscles?  That didn’t mean anything really.  He could be a horrible person, but they none of them seemed to care.

"My mom’s birthday, remember?" he said, sliding into the booth next to Grenn.

"I thought you’d gotten chucked in a lake," said Pyp.

"It’s pouring out," Jon said.  "Can’t you hear it?"  

Pyp tilted his head and looked at the ceiling.  

"He can, with his big ears," said Grenn, "I certainly can’t, though."

"You’re too drunk for it," said Edd.  "I can hear it."

"I thought it was part of the music," said Sam.

"For five straight songs?" Edd demanded.

"I don’t know.  DJing or something," said Sam.  He yawned.  "I should probably go."

"I just got here!" yelped Jon, leaning forward on his bench and feeling the pleather of the seat peeling away from his skin.

"Not his fault that you’re a late little turd, is it?" said Edd, with a jerk of his head towards Sam.  "He got here an hour and a half ago, and has a baby at home."

"Yeah, your poor timing is not to be condoned," said Grenn.  "We’ve been ages."  He hiccuped, then looked startled that he had hiccuped.  Pyp rolled his eyes at him.

"Jon was at his mother’s birthday party," Pyp sighed.   "Being a good and dutiful son and all that."

"Was your half-sister there?" demanded Grenn.

"My entire damn family was there," said Jon.

"Surely not—" Sam began, but Jon cut him off.

"Except my dad.  But he doesn’t count."

He ignored Sam’s gaze—the one that knew how much he was lying through his teeth to say that.  

"You didn’t drive here drunk, did you?" asked Edd.

"No.  I waited."

"Then let’s buy you drink you poor bastard.  Sam, you can stay for another round.  Gilly will understand."

Sam began protesting, but Grenn bellowed for a waitress and ordered a round of beers and Sam couldn’t just let the beer go to waste—that was poor form, and Pyp would be more than happy to drop him off at home since he wouldn’t be good to drive anymore and Jon was almost able to relax.  If it weren’t for his damned sticky t-shirt, everything would be close to perfect.

*

The windshield wipers of Stannis’ car were moving so fast that Davos thought, for a moment, that they had to be some sort of animated parody—something from loony tunes or one of those Anime shows that Steffon was always watching.  He was rather amazed they hadn’t just flown off the front of the car at this point.  Surely they weren’t quite equipped to use quite so much force and push away quite enough rain.

"When was the last time you had your windshield waxed?" Davos asked.

"Too long ago, apparently," said Stannis, shortly.  They were returning from a conference, and should have been home over an hour ago, but there had been flash floods on the highway and everyone was moving at a ridiculously slow pace.  Davos didn’t press the issue.

"Nearly there," he said instead.  "Nearly there."

"We’re still late." 

"Selyse’ll still be up.  And Shireen," Davos said.  From the way that Stannis didn’t say anything, he could tell that that wasn’t what was annoying him.  He’d probably had plans of some sort.  

Davos always referred to them as “plans of some sort.”  He knew it was avoiding the issue, but at this point, he didn’t think there was anything he could do, except hope that one or both of them would come to their senses soon.

He reached up for the handle above the window, feeling his body steady into a new position while the car inched forwards, the sound of heavy drops crackling against the windshield like crumpled cellophane. 

"You’re quiet," Stannis said at last.

"You’re one to talk," Davos replied—and he smiled to himself.

"That’s clever," Stannis said.  "Very clever."

"You know me, smart mouth with nothing between the ears."

Stannis made a low noise in the back of his throat.  ”You’re subtle.  Far more subtle than most.  Certainly more subtle than me.”

"I think," said Davos, shifting again, "that a squadron of elephants trumpeting Sousa are more subtle than you are."

Stannis sighed.  ”Probably—probably.”

Davos heard clear as day the thoughts that Stannis wasn’t sharing, the ones that had his mind on the red woman and the storm that was making his car go so slowly.  Davos gripped his hands a little tighter onto the handhold and looked out of the window, glad to see they were nearly home.

*

She almost doesn’t hear her phone buzzing over the thundering of the rain.

"That you?" Gendry asked.  

"Hm?" 

"Your phone." She glanced at the table and sure enough, her screen was lit up and an unknown number was calling it.  She grabbed it, pulled herself off the couch, and went into Gendry’s room.

"Hello?"

"Hi—" she didn’t recognize the voice, a woman’s voice, hushed.  Arya heard the crackling of thunder overhead and through her phone.   _She’s nearby._ "is this Weasel?"

She froze.

"How did you get this number?" she hissed.

"A friend of a friend," said the woman.  

"Yeah, I don’t take calls anymore," she snapped.  "So if you’ll—"

The woman panicked.  ”No—wait, please.  I need help.  Please.”

"Get someone else’s number," she hissed.  God, Gendry was in the next room—what if he heard her?  Fuck this, she was going to find Jaqen and—

"You’re the only one local.  Please—it’s my brother, he could end up dead or worse.  Please, you have to help me."

Arya heard a yell off the television in the next room, heard Gendry snorting the way he did whenever he heard a Wilhelm Scream.  She didn’t find it funny the way he did.  She’d heard too many people actually scream that way.

"I’m making no promises—tell me the details and do it quickly."

*

How could she start the email?   _Dear Arianne—you’ve probably never met me, or maybe not even heard of me, but our Aunts are married, and Elia recommended I get in touch with you about—_

About what?  Finishing her degree? Going to Paris and drinking a semester away while some cute French boys blew smoke in her face?  Escaping all her problems by pretending she wasn’t the same person anymore?  She already had done that one.  And Brienne said that it had only made things worse, and that she should accept who she is and what has happened to her, because with acceptance comes peace and all that.

It was still raining outside, though the thunder was winding away.  She heard Rickon’s rock music playing down the hall, and heard the low murmur of her parents’ voices through the bedroom walls.  Arya wasn’t back yet, but Sansa didn’t quite expect her to come back tonight.  She hoped that Arya was having a good time, that she was letting herself relax, letting herself enjoy the late summer night, the rain, the company of a friend.

She was so good at distracting herself—so good at letting her mind take her away from things that caused her nervousness.  She smiled.  Whenever she thought something like that, she had this mental image of Brienne nodding approvingly.  ”Self-awareness is key,” she would say gently, and Sansa would feel a warm glow in her heart.

_Dear Arianne_ , she typed,  _My name is Sansa Stark, I’m Lyanna’s niece, and I was hoping we could find a time to skype so I could ask you a few questions about…._

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, wondering what the best way to phrase it was.  Then, she decided.

_restarting._

_*_

Grenn was very drunk by the time that they got into the car, his eyes glazed, his mouth hanging open.

"You don’t think he’ll vomit, will he?" Sam asked, clambering into the back of Pyp’s station wagon.

"If he does, I’ll kill him," muttered Pyp, glancing over his shoulder to check for traffic.  It was late—much later than he knew that Sam had intended to be out, and even though it was raining, Pyp drove a little faster than he probably should have to get Sam home.  He lived further from the bar than Grenn did, but Grenn wouldn’t notice, and Grenn had given up the right to complain, frankly.  There was no one on the road, and Pyp knew how to handle hydroplaning.  He wasn’t worried.

The lights in Sam’s apartment were on when they got there, and Sam waved goodbye tiredly as he got out of the car without a word.  Grenn started when he slammed the door.

"What?  Where?  Who?"

"Getting you home," said Pyp.

"Pyp?"

"Yes, that’s me," said Pyp.  

"Oh.  Good."  Grenn made as if he were chewing the air, frowning slightly.  "How long?"

"How long till what?" Pyp asked, pulling back out onto the road.

"Home?  Need to piss."

"Ten minutes.  Maybe less," Pyp replied.

"Need to piss now, Pyp," said Grenn.

Pyp rolled his eye and pulled over to the side of the road.  It was still raining, though not as heavily as before.  The thunder had stopped as well, so he couldn’t really say it was too dangerous.  He put the car in park, and Grenn pushed open the door and almost fell onto the ground.

"Oh, you great idiot," sighed Pyp, unbuckling and getting out on his side.  He rounded the car quickly, helping Grenn to his feet.  "Can you do it on your own?" he asked.

"Yes," said Grenn emphatically, stumbling over to a tree.  Pyp rolled his eyes and turned away so, keeping his eye on the road in case someone drove by and he had to think up some sort of quick excuse.

"Pyp," called Grenn.

"Yes Grenn?"

"You’re the best, you know that?"

Pyp would have smiled, except he was cold and wet and tired and hadn’t gotten to drink this evening because he was the one driving everyone home.

"Thanks, Grenn," he said.

"I mean it—you really are.  Better than everyone else.  Best in the world."

"It would mean a lot more if you said that when you weren’t taking a piss," said Pyp.

"Well, I’m saying it now because I can.  I’m drunk.  And you’re supposed to say things you mean when you’re drunk."

"You more than anyone.  You about done?  It’s still raining."

Grenn stumbled back from the tree and wrapped his arms around Pyp.  It was a tight hug, and for a moment, Pyp was afraid his ribs would break.

"Best friend," said Grenn.  "The very best."  And he pressed a kiss to Pyp’s lips.

*

She didn’t watch Charlie die. Well, she did. She saw him press his palm against the window with the words  _Not Penny’s Boat_  scrawled on it in sharpie, but she didn’t really see it.  She couldn’t really see it—she couldn’t really see anything. _  
_

She was running over Asha’s story in her head.   _They had him in a basement for over a year, slowly carving off pieces of him, raping him, torturing him.  He’s gone through intensive therapy, and they’ve broken the agreement and are getting in touch with him again.  There’s also a girl—named—_ I don’t do names _—fine ok, well, they had her too.  Beaten and raped and the whole nine yards.  They are bad people and they’re after them again and I need help, I can’t just—I can’t just go and—you know?_

Arya did know.  Arya knew all to well.  No, you can’t just—and then expect life to be normal, and go on the way that it was before.  You can’t just—and expect to get away with it.  That’s what you called her for, because she got away with it—she always did, because nobody ever thought it was her.  That was why she was so good at it, why she was so—

But she was done with that now— _done_  with it.  She’d hug up her pistols and gone home and pretended that she was normal Arya and that she didn’t know what sound someone’s skull made when you beat it in with the butt of a rifle.  She was normal Arya, who wanted to play volleyball again and made fun of Rickon’s hair, and folded laundry with Sansa, and watched  _Lost_  with Gendry, who laughed at all the plotholes the writers were making for themselves.  She was  _Arya_.  She wasn’t No One anymore—she didn’t do things like that, couldn’t do things like that, couldn’t just—

But then again, she couldn’t leave them like that.  She couldn’t.  Especially now that they’d gotten in touch with her.  What would she do if something happened to them, and she hadn’t helped them?  Would it be her fault for  _not_?

"Everything ok?" Gendry asked.

Arya looked over at him blankly, and forced a smile.  

"You sure?"

She wanted to cry—she knew he could tell, but she couldn’t  _ever_  say anything about it—especially not to him.  She nodded jerkily and pulled her phone over to her, texting the number that Asha called her on.

_It’s not a no.  If you’re smart, you’ll find someone else.  I’m still considering.  But it’s not a no._


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ned, Catelyn, Rickon, Lyanna, Robert, Arya, Gendry, Grenn, Pyp, Daenerys, Ramsay, Theon, Jon, Jeyne, Mellario, Sandor, Brienne, Myrcella, Aegon, Sansa, Brynden, Tyrion, Edric, Melisandre, Davos

Ned always had been good at telling himself that things were all right when they weren’t.  Cat wasn’t sure when she’d noticed this.  Maybe after Sansa had been born, or maybe the third time that Bran had fallen off the roof (“three times, and it becomes a trend, Ned,” she’d snapped at him, and he’d shrugged and said that everything was fine—everything would be fine.  Bran wouldn’t fall again, he wouldn’t…). 

Sometimes, on stormy nights like tonight, he would fall asleep easily, his heavy breath warm on the back of her neck as he curled around her, his blankets thrown over her to double her heat since she was the only warmth he needed in summer.  Ned was asleep now, content in the sound of thunder and heavy rain drops that had lulled him to sleep hours before, but Cat—

She wanted to be content.  Truly she did.  She’d thought she could be—thought she could let herself be, given that everything seemed to be getting better.  Bran was less sullen, Sansa smiled a little more often, Robb was on his way to getting a promotion, Rickon looked like he might be getting recruited by one of the Ivies…and then Arya had disappeared for the night—Arya, who  _loved_  Lyanna and Jon and who had often as a child threatened to run away and live with them, even if it meant she would have to endure Aegon’s annoying laughter because she’d have Jon and Aunt Lyanna…

Ned had told her what felt like ages ago that he was worried about Arya—that she was just as good as pulling on a demeanor of relaxation as Sansa was, that she was of different stock, perhaps, but similar practice.  Cat had shrugged it off them.  “Arya’s fine,” she had said, “She’s just found a new MMORPG group.”  And Ned—Ned had bit his lip, the way that Arya did when she lied, and he had nodded.

Maybe that was why he slept so calmly now.  He had somehow known this—whatever it was—was coming.

*

_Do you want to see a movie?  There’s an old Argella Durrendon film playing at the drive in and it’s the only one I haven’t seen._

The words flashed in a bubble on the upper right hand corner of his laptop, black on blue, and he clicked it far too quickly.  He’d promised himself he’d stop clicking them to quickly.  Because it was all too ridiculous.  Much too ridiculous.

He’d grown up watching Robb flirt, grown up watching Robb have girls over for dinner, for baking, for watching a movie with the family.  He remembered their names—Jeyne, Talisa, Margaery, Alys…He’d liked each of them well enough but had always been so fascinated by the easy way that Robb spoke to each of them, the way he dangle arms over them, or threw his legs across their laps and whispered things in their ears.  Robb had always had an easy confidence and Rickon wished he had.

His fingers hovered over his laptop keyboard.  He should wait a few minutes, shouldn’t he?  Pretend that he was doing something important, like talking to that Recruiter from Stanford, or the one from Dartmouth. But if he waited too long, wouldn’t she then ask someone else?  What if she did, and he blew his chances?

_Rickon Stark: I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything.  She any good?_

_Lyanna Mormont: She’s probably my favorite comedian in the world. You really haven’t ever watched her movies?_

_Rickon Stark: My family was always more of a Gardner’s Group kind of family._

_Lyanna Mormont: Well then, you definitely have to come.  There’s no choice.  I’m not letting you come.  It’s for your own cultural edification._

Rickon did his best not to grin at his computer screen. 

_Rickon Stark: Fine.  Let me look at my calendar though.  I need to figure out when I’m free.  This week is crazy for me._

_Lyanna Mormont: Ok—but don’t think that I’m going to just let you dance off and disappear before it leaves the theater.  You are going to see it with me and that’s final._

_*_

Lyanna awoke to twenty text messages, and anger flared in her when she saw that most of them were from Robert.  She clicked on the one from Jon first—Jon telling her that he had gotten home safely and that if she was still awake she should look in the direction of the river because the lightning was something else.  She clicked on the one from Rhaenys, saying she’d made it down to Manhattan without any trouble.  She clicked on the one from Brandon, which was a garbled bunch of text and she bit her lip, hoping it was a butt text and not a drunk one.

Then she opened Robert’s chat screen.

Her first thought was amazement—how many words he’d written, how many of them didn’t make sense, how many texts everything had taken up. 

_Lyannnna, i  m soooo sorry_ _:(_

_Lyanna plz talk to me_

_R u rly mad at me?_

_Plz, Lyanna, i didnt mean to cause truble i ddnt wnat to ruin eliya’s_ (He had to go and misspell her name, didn’t he?)  _burthday._

_Plz let me no waht i can do to make it up to u_

Those five were from the hours just after Lyanna had gone to bed, curled up next to Elia, both of them warm in the storm, content to have each other and having loved the memories of Robert’s drunkenness out of one another’s minds.

There was another set from closer to four in the morning.

 _Y wont u text me back u bitch? i said i was sry. y dont u txt me back? i love u, Lyanna, more than you could ever understand—more than elia (_ spelled correctly this time, but Lyanna didn’t care—she was at that point furious)  _ever could bcz she couldnt love u the way i could.  nd i no that we broke up a lonnnng time ago, but i never stopped lovin gu. I love u more than i love my own wife, more than i could ever have loved her, and my kids should b urs to, and jon shuold b mine, and we could have been happy, lyanna, happy.  so y wont u just fcuking accept that? bc u no its true.  u no it nd ur scarred of it bc as long as uv lived uv known we were meant to be together—itw as so prfect but u nevr saw it that way and_

Lyanna had read enough.  She put her phone face down on the bedstand, counting her breaths the way her therapis had told her to whenever she was angry because letting herself calm down was so…

Fuck it.  Fuck him.  Fuck him to pieces because did he honestly think she’d forgive him?  In what deluded world did he live?  In what fucked up corner of his mind did he think that she’d read that and think that the past twenty-odd years of her life were wrong and she’d fall into bed with him again and they’d have shitty drunken sex and the world would come to rights?  Did he think that this was something she’d read and fall back in love with him? Because it wasn’t.

Robert had never understood— _never_ —that she’d never once thought of drunken confessions as something brave, and true, and noble.

They were cowardly.  They were chickenshit cowardly fucking awful things, and she’d never seen more clearly into his subconscious than she did now and fuck making Ned happy, Robert was never coming to her house again.

*

Gendry had watched almost an entire season of  _Lost_  before stopped changing the dvds and lay on his futon, staring blankly at the wall and wondering to what extent it would be worth putting in the last dvd and making a full marathon of it.

That would, of course, require moving, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he was up to that at the moment, not even to drag himself across his apartment and throw himself on his bed, which was an infinitely more comfortable place to sleep than this worn-down joke of a futon that had survived drunken college parties and drunken college friends who needed a place to crash that was on a Metro North line into the City.

He reached above him and grabbed the flannel blanket that Arya had wrapped around herself while she’d been here as a silent protest that his air conditioning was too strong.  It smelled like her and he suppressed an internal groan.  He didn’t want to notice how Arya smelled—he wished he’d never noticed it in the first place because it made everything so much more complicated than it needed to be, and it wasn’t as though it would make a difference.  Why couldn’t he feel the victory of her coming over to his place to escape her family, rather than going home and logging onto her computer?  Why couldn’t things to back to the way that they had been, instead of Arya looking like a woman an smelling like something he couldn’t describe without sounding poetical and bullshitty?  Because he didn’t want to be that nice guy who waited around for her to notice that he’d been here the whole time (to quote Taylor Swift) pining away and expecting her to love him.  Because that wasn’t fair to her. 

And yet fuck he wanted her to turn around and smile at him in a new way, those long grey eyes suddenly alight and her hands twitching the way that Darcy’s had in pretty much every interpretation of  _Pride and Prejudice_ known to man. 

He groaned, knowing that if he thought of Arya he’d never fall asleep, so he dragged himself from the futon and put in the next disc of  _Lost_  and hoped that it would prove enough of a distraction to let him fall asleep in a flannel blanket that smelled like her.

*

Grenn licked his lips and snuggled deeper into his blankets, pushing his face into his pillow and blocking out the early morning sunlight.  

He already knew that it was too early—too damn early because he knew without having to look at his clock that it was.  He always woke up too quickly after nights of drinking, and he had drunk enough that he couldn’t even…

They’d dropped Sam off at home, hadn’t they?  And then he’d needed to piss.  And Pyp had rolled his eyes and grumbled and had pulled over to the side of the road and—

Grenn’s eyes snapped open of their own accord, and he felt blood pounding in his head even as it rushed up to his face to fuel the blush that had come up because he  _couldn’t_  have done  _that_ , could he?  No—he…he wasn’t that kind of a…no.  No, he hadn’t.  That had to be a dream or something.  He’d blacked out and his head had thrown in a memory of a particularly pleasant dream, right?  That had to be it.  He—

Balls.

*

Daenerys hated him sometimes.  And she’d been told so often growing up that hatred wasn’t worth the time or the energy, that you should let everything go because hatred at things unchangeable was…she couldn’t even remember how her mother had phrased it.  Her mother had always said it differently, but the essence was always the same, and the cause too: hate detracts from life.

That didn’t stop her from hating him.  Hating him for keeping her waiting, for making her wonder if she actually mattered to him, or if he just liked the way she looked and the stares his buddies gave him when he showed up with his blue hair and his golden tooth and a pretty bit of skirt on his arm.  Maybe Viserys was right—that he wasn’t worth her time, but that didn’t stop her caring about him, or thinking about him when he took off his clothes and stood there, fit and fine and ready to just sweep her into bed and fuck her senseless.

And yet here she was, completely alone, sitting on a train platform without  _any_  sign of him—and no cell service to boot and what the hell was she supposed to do?  What if he didn’t come?  What if she was stuck here by herself until the next train came?  She could try and catch it to somewhere where she could fly back home and—

It all hurt too much.  All of it.  It hurt feeling left behind, like you somehow weren’t as important as you thought you were before,  a reminder that you were the “mistake” of the family, that you were never supposed to happen, and weren’t the precious darling and you were all on your own.  And Viserys and Rhaegar were both too wrapped up in themselves to care for a second and you just….

She hated thinking about it— _hated_  remembering it.  But she knew she had a type: guys who treated her like a princess weren’t worth her time.  She didn’t need to be convinced of that—no more than her mother.  Find a guy who treats most women like dirt and who somehow gave you the time of day—that was more of Dany’s type.  And she fucking  _knew_  it too.  They were exciting, gritty, real in a way that no one else really was.

So why, why,  _why_  did it hurt so much when they forgot about her, abandoned her, started treating her like shit?

*

"Don’t do anything fucking stupid, asshole," Domeric had shouted after him as Ramsay had slammed the car door shut behind him and stumped up the driveway towards his basement apartment. Ramsay didn’t even look back. He was exhausted. They had spent the whole night looking for Tully and he’d just gotten chewed out by Dad for texting Reek again—as if he had needed that on top of the chewing out that Domeric had given him.

What made them so sure they were right goddammit? If they hadn’t interfered in the first place, they wouldn’t all be in this fucking predicament, would they? And he’d still have his Reek. Were they such cowards—scared of the fucking Greyjoys? Who gave a shit what those weak shits thought anyway? Their crowd hardly mattered, all things considered—less ballsy than him and Dad and Domeric, and less moneyed than the Lannisters. 

Didn’t they get it?  Weren’t they affronted at the very idea that any shitless wonders like that could just make them lie down and do whatever they wanted?  And with what, threatening to bring the law down on their asses?  What kind of weak shit was that?  What did Greyjoys or Boltons or Lannisters care about the law?  They  _were_  the fucking law.  And yet, somehow, Dad hadn’t been angry—he had just made Ramsay give back his Reek, and his “Arya” too, and he was supposed to just sit back and not care?

They were his! Of course he cared.  And suddenly, he didn’t care about Dad’s cautions and Domeric’s warnings. He didn’t give a rat’s ass what Domeric thought was “fucking stupid” because he could do whatever the fuck he wanted and if any of them— _including_  Dad and Domeric—thought they could stop him, he’d flay their fucking fingers off.

Ramsay pulled out his phone and sent another text message.   _They don’t want me to, but I am coming for you, Reek. So hide away as much as you like, I love a good game of hide and seek._

_*_

When they’d been very little, and he, and Robb, and Aegon had been playing basketball in the driveway of Uncle Ned’s house, Jon had always kept his eyes on the trees.  Not because he had a fixation with trees or anything, though Aegon had teased him and said that he did, and Robb had rolled his eyes and insisted that the trees at their house weren’t even  _interesting—_ but because invariably, Arya would be there, sitting in the branches of the old apple tree, watching them play.

Arya had a way with projectiles—she always had.  She had pristine hand-eye coordination.  When Robb and Aegon hadn’t let her play with them (“You’re too little,” or “You wouldn’t be able to make the ball go in the hoop, Arya,”) she’d climbed the apple tree, found a group of half-ripe apples and thrown them at Robb, Aegon, and then into the hoop, each one hitting her mark as perfectly as if she’d seen a little red bull’s eye on each of them.  Robb had tried climbing up the tree after her to bring her down and shout at her, Aegon had rubbed his head and asked Jon how much force was necessary for something to give him a concussion, and Arya had laughed and laughed.  And Jon—he’d grinned at her, winking, and he’d known that she had known that he was on  _her_  side.

Jon had been the one to shoot hoops with Arya, long after Robb and Aegon had decided they’d preferred Soccer and Rowing respectively.  And when Arya switched from Basketball to Volleyball, Jon would listen to her rant about her dumb friends while doing tips against the side of the garage.  He liked the way she would smile wryly, or roll her eyes when talking about Robb’s constant bemoaning of his girlfriends.  But most of all, he loved watching the way her hands moved almost without thinking, the way that the ball never danced away from her and knowing that she could go far in the sport if she wanted to because it came as easily to her as breathing.

*

Jeyne always dealt the cards. Theon couldn’t shuffle them, unless he threw all the cards on the ground and put them all back in a pile again, but that was always more trouble than it was worth with his fingers. So instead, Jeyne did it, and Theon did his best to ignore the pang of jealousy that shot through him when he saw the way that she bridged the cards between her small pale hands.

They played together, though it wasn’t really fun.  They didn’t ever use the word “game” because “game” reminded them of  _him_  and his  _games_  and that was a sure way to make Jeyne begin trembling and make Theon begin taste bile in the back of his throat.  So they just played.  Nothing with slaps because Theon’s hands couldn’t take it—and even if they could, the sudden noises were likely to make Jeyne go still for just a moment.

So usually, it was Go Fish, but only because BS was no fun if there was just the two of them.  When Asha wasn’t downstairs, when she came up to keep them company, they played BS.

Theon liked Go Fish.  It wasn’t hard, and it allowed both of them to think of florid ways to say “Go Fish.”  (“You should buy a boat and a new pole,” “Do you need to borrow a net?” “What’s this?  A river.  You might want to try for dinner.”)  The more florid the language, the more likely it was that for just a second, they could forget that they couldn’t leave the house, and that they didn’t even want to leave Asha’s bedroom.

*

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Mellario woke up in a cold sweat and it took her a few minutes to remember where she was and why she was so far away from home.  That was, of course, when she remembered what home was.  What was home?  Was home her father’s house in Rome?  Or Doran’s apartment in New York?  Or even the tiny hole in the wall that Arianne was occupying in the huitieme that was without question the dirtiest apartment that Mellario had ever set foot in.  Or the apartment that was a ten minute walk from the Sorbonne that she’d lived in for the past ten years, clean and old and smelling like lavender oil.

She didn’t know what home was.  She pretended to, sometimes—usually when having tea with Ellaria and talking about her nieces and her children.  She loved her apartment, loved her students, her job, her clothes, her neighborhood.  Paris was perfect compared to any other city she’d ever lived in.  And yet Paris was empty, it seemed—at least for her.

She missed Quentyn most, she realized one afternoon, reading  _Le Monde_ and rolling her eyes at a really rather ridiculous cartoon.  Quentyn, her sweet, quiet boy who always had a smile for her and who never once seemed to question why she’d left.  Arianne did.  She could see the unasked question in Arianne’s eyes whenever she went over to Arianne’s apartment for crepes.   _Why did you leave us, Mama?_

And what could she say to that?   _Because you weren’t home, Arianne.  None of you were._    _And coming home to home that wasn’t home was more than ever I could bear._ Easier to let Arianne blame her, or Doran for failing to be the husband she needed.  Easier to let them all think that she’d just hated her marriage.  Because even Mellario didn’t know—couldn’t say—why Mellario had left.

*

"What the fuck do you want?"

Brienne shouldn’t be surprised, really.  He’d never been one for common courtesy.  But she had at the very least expected a “hello.”

"Aren’t you going to invite me in?" she asked him delicately, crossing her arms.  She would have leaned against his door frame, except that his hand was already pressed against the wood, barring her passage.

"Depends.  What the fuck do you want?"  His good eye narrowed and for a moment, she wondered if she mightn’t be able to just push her way past him.  She was quite strong, but he was taller, and had always had more muscle.  And while Brienne was easily the best student in every Tae Kwon Do class she’d ever taken, she didn’t think that she could get past Sandor, even if she tried her hardest—not unless he let her.

So she tried a different tactic.

"Do you by any chance know Sansa Stark."

She hadn’t expected him to go pale, for his arm to drop like a ton of bricks, for him to almost stagger back as though she’d punched him hard in the chest.  Sandor made a jerking gesture with his head, and she stepped into his apartment.

It was a mess and it smelled of stale beer, empty aluminum cans on nearly every surface.  She saw his laundry strewn across the floor and there were flies buzzing around his kitchen.

"Want a beer?" he grunted, stepping towards the refrigerator.

"No, thank you."

He took out a can of Budweiser, snapped it open and downed the whole thing in a few swift glugs.  He put the empty can on the kitchen counter, grabbed another beer and then leaned against his stove, watching her.

"What about her, then?" he asked at last, not looking at Brienne.

"I wanted to know how you knew her," Brienne said, trying to sound more determined, more brave than she felt.  Truth be told, at that very moment she wanted to run away, to hide, to pretend that this man had nothing to do with Sansa, that he was either some creature of Sansa’s imagination—embroidered into a positive light to hide his monstrosities, a coping mechanism for the poor girl; or the cousin that Brienne had spent time with every summer.  But the two of them in one body was almost more than Brienne could bear.  Toss in the gross breach of doctor-patient confidentiality and, for the first time in ages, she felt truly lost.

Sandor let out a bitter laugh.  ”I think you know the answer to that.”  He opened his second beer can with another loud snap.  ”Otherwise, you wouldn’t be asking, would you?”

It was the laugh that made her square her shoulders and stare him down.  ”Well then—what did you do to her?” she demanded.

He grinned at her, and it was a mirthless grin—looking more like a grimace of pain on the side of his face that could hold an expression.  ”I didn’t do anything, did I?  Couldn’t.  Couldn’t do anything to help her either.  She wouldn’t fucking let me.”

*

Part of it—and Gendry  _knew_ this—was that he sometimes wondered just  _what_ he meant to her.  Not what he  _had_  meant to her.  He knew that.  

A friend is a friend, and they’d spent so much time together when they’d first met, and she’d been missing her cousins and her brother, gone off as they were to university.  He knew what everyone thought of them, what everyone assumed that they meant to one another, because that was the easiest thing to assume: that he was creeping on a teenaged girl.  But that wasn’t it.  That wasn’t it at all.  She was one of the first people he’d ever known who just understood him, who made him laugh.  And he could make her laugh too.  And they just  _got_  one another, in that easy way that friends do.  He’d likened her—more than once—to a little sister he’d never had, much to the unconvinced eye-rolling of his college friends.

But what was it all now?  What were they now?  What had happened to her?  What had she experienced or gone through that made someone who wanted to spend every waking moment doing things hole up in her room, alone?  She certainly had seemed to appreciate his company—she had been frustrated of course when he’d started coming around, but then she’d stopped—even seemed to like it and…

But what if she didn’t—not really?  What if she just felt bad for him, left in the lurch while she’d gone off and disappeared, and was trying to let him down gently because some part of her still cared?  And did that make him care even more?  Did it? He certainly thought she might.  But if he did, then…

No.  No, he was making himself crazy, and he shouldn’t do that because he was tired and he should go back to sleep, really.  Because if he got himself into a frenzy…

He didn’t want to think about it.  So he stumbled from his futon to his bed and buried his face in his pillow, and within ten minutes he was snoring.

*

"So the way I see it, you’re fucked," Aegon said.

"I’m not.  That’s just the whole problem now, isn’t it?" Myrcella sighed into her phone, twisting on her bed and wrapping one of her curls around her finger.

"I mean—you really,  _really_  don’t want to shit where you eat, you know what I mean?”

"No, I don’t know what you mean.  What do you mean?" Myrcella laughed, glad he couldn’t see her face, which she imagined was contorted into a rather appalled expression.  Aegon had always had a way with words.  

"Don’t fuck around in your office.  It’s like…real life one-oh-one.  Don’t do it.  Just don’t.  It always,  _always_  ends badly, no matter what the TV shows would have you believe.”  Myrcella examined her nails and bit her lip, knowing he was right.  

"I know," she said at last.  "I mean—it’s just a crush.  I know it’s just a crush."

"I mean, if you need to let off steam, take him out for drinks, fuck him, and let that be that.  But if it’s  _twue luv_ ,” he put on a baby voice, “get a different job, or wait for him to, then pursue it.  And, when you do, at the very least have the good sense to make sure Robb Stark has talked to him about it.”

"Why?" she asked, not sure whether to be annoyed or nervous.

"Because.  Robb has good sense.  And you don’t want some asshole to dick you around in front of all your friend.  If Robb’s on your side, then you’ll be fine."

"He wouldn’t dick me around in front of all my friends, and I can take care of myself without," her voice clicked—oh damn, her voice clicked—"Robb’s help."

There was a pause—maybe Aegon wouldn’t notice?

"Cella?"

"Yes?"

"It’s not Robb who you want to fuck, is it?"

"What?  No!  Of course it’s not!  Why would I want to fuck Robb?"

Aegon didn’t set out a word, but he let out a long whistle and Myrcella began hitting herself in the forehead.   _Damn.  Damn.  Damn._

_*_

"He didn’t mean to hurt me," Sansa repeated.  "He didn’t.  He had a lot of issues, and a lot of trouble, and—"

"Yes," Brienne agreed, doing her absolute best to keep her voice neutral.  She remembered Sandor, drunk and crying on his couch in a beer-stained undershirt.  She remembered him as a kid, too, angry and withdrawn and always saying rude things whenever he felt defensive because better to make the world think you were what it wanted to believe you were, rather than have it see (or worse—completely miss) the horrifying knot of hot mess underneath.

"But sometimes I wonder if your empathy gets away with you.  It’s a beautiful thing really—that you feel his pain and his hurt and want to make it better.  But I also think," and she tried to sound as gentle as she could, because saying it to Sansa was only slightly less important than saying it to herself, "that it’s not  _your_  job to fix his issues.  You can be aware of them, respectful of them, but that’s what therapists are for.  If anything, being too aware of his problems can be dangerous to your own health, Sansa.”

Sansa stared at her blankly, wide blue eyes not quite dull, but certainly not bright either.

"How so?" she asked quietly.  "Because I don’t know if I agree."

Brienne almost smiled.  But if she smiled, she was fairly certain she’d start crying too, and that would be probably the worst thing to do right now.  ”Because you might confuse what  _he_  needs with what  _you_  need.  And that’s not to say that you can’t help him ultimately—but you aren’t  _prepared_  to help him unless you have sorted yourself out.  Your own strength and health is so important, Sansa.  And I know you know this.  And I am so proud of the progress you have made.  And I don’t, honestly, think that your wanting to help him is a bad thing.  I really,  _really_  don’t.”   _Maybe you and I can do it together_ , she thought wildly.  But she didn’t say it.  Instead, she continued, “But unless you are honest with yourself about what happened to you, and what  _you felt_  while he was out of control, you can’t keep progressing.  What his motivations were don’t necessarily matter.  What matters is that you see your own reactions clearly, and don’t go back and write over them to make yourself feel safer, make yourself feel better.” _  
_

Sansa was looking down at her hands again, her body drawn in as if she were trying very hard to shield herself from Brienne’s words.  Brienne wanted to kick herself.  She shouldn’t have—but no.  Sansa wasn’t a delicate flower.  She didn’t need protection, she needed aid.  There was a difference.  And Brienne was giving that to her—if more tough than usual.

"I was afraid of him," Sansa said at last.  "Scared of him.  But also…" she let the word hang in the air like a hummingbird.

"Also?" Brienne prompted, hardly daring to breathe.

Sansa looked away, out of the window at the blossoming lily plant outside of Brienne’s window.  ”Confused.  I don’t know.  I’m confused.  I was confused.  I—I don’t know if I’ll be able to figure it out.”

And Brienne breathed.  Because that— _that_  was easier to work with than any other answer Sansa could have given her.

*

He had always loved the way that Reek’s lips trembled when he was scared.  It was an open-mouthed scared, ringed in trembling flesh, and those lips, though they didn’t say anything at all, asked the question—that perfect question—“What are you doing?  What comes next?”

No one had ever asked him that before—not that way.  Not with anxiety, and nervousness, listening for every little detail, wondering if he was holding anything back, or if he was being completely forthright.  Dad’s and Domeric’s questions were always the ones asked of a stupid child.  ”What sort of fuckery are you getting up to, moron?  Are you ruining everything?  Do you know what comes next?”  Not so with Reek.  Reek wanted to know because he knew that Ramsay was in charge.

He sat on a bench outside of Asha Greyjoy’s house.  The sun had gone down after a lazy day—most everyone had spent it recovering from the storm of last night.  There had been some downed trees, some power lines that needed to be put back together, but on the whole, a quiet lazy summer day.  No one thought twice about Ramsay, sitting on a bench, reading a book without really reading because he was watching the house, watching the way that Asha Greyjoy peered out of her living room window, eyes wide and angry when she saw him, watching the way that she called someone on her cell phone, watching the way that the curtains in an upstairs window sometimes fluttered, as though someone was breathing on them.

He smiled into the pages of  _The Importance of Being Earnest_ , knowing they were there—both of them—and that one false move, you fucking Greyjoy cunt and you’d be dead and they’ll be mine again.   _  
_

He waited, lazily flicking pages back and forth, ignoring the words because the words didn’t matter because words only mattered if he was speaking them to Reek.  Words on a page, someone else’s words—especially some dead fucker’s words—were meaningless.  Dad always said that words mattered, but he was wrong.  Words couldn’t protect you.  Words weren’t the best way of getting what you wanted.

When it was almost too dark to see the words on the page, he tucked the book away and glanced back at the house.  None of the lights were on.  Not one.  And he stood up, stretching, letting his shirt ride up slightly.  When he dropped his hands to his side again, and toyed with hem of it, straightening it out—he had to look pristine for Reek—he saw it.  A red dot.

"What the—" but blood was ballooning out of the dot and he didn’t even have time to finish the question before he—

*

Brynden didn’t know how long he slept for, but when he opened his eyes, it was dark and he didn’t know where he was.  For a moment, he stiffened, until he realized he was lying in a soft bed and that there were linen bandages on his hands and feet.  He could hear the whisper of the leaves outside, and in the distance, a car driving home in the dark.

Edmure’s house.  He was at Edmure’s house.  He’d gotten away from that fucking mess and he was safe—for now at least.  And Edmure wasn’t home, his fiancee was—a girl with doe brown eyes and…

He heard footsteps and the door to the bedroom cracked open.  He saw the outline of her, a curtain of straight dark hair swinging around the door as she checked on him.

"Hello," he croaked.

"Oh good.  I was beginning to think I should lug you over to the hospital."  She sounded genuinely relieved.

"How long have I been out?" he asked.

"A couple of days.  You lost a lot of blood.  But I didn’t…I didn’t know if it would be a good idea," she sounded hesitant.  "You were nervous about being seen."

He grinned, sitting up and ignoring the twinge of pain in his rib from where whats-his-face—the older one—had swiped at him with a knife.  ”All fine now,” he said.  ”Though hungry.”

"I have some eggs in the fridge.  I can whip some up for you in just a second."

"That—that sounds perfect," he beamed at her.  He saw the outline of her face shift, her cheeks crunching up into a smile.  She backed away, leaving the door into the hallway ajar and Brynden got up to follow her, not caring that he shouldn’t involve her in this because eggs were the only thing he could think of and he was quite sure there was nothing more delicious on the planet.

*

She didn’t—no, no no, she didn’t, she didn’t think that it would have gone that way—no.

Sansa had breathed deeply, her nostrils flaring, her heart racing when she had left Brienne’s office, driving the twenty minutes home to the house that was empty because Rickon was playing and Bran was out and Mom and Dad weren’t back from work and Arya hadn’t come home from Gendry’s.  Her mind was reeling, roiling, boiling over because just because she—just because she thought—

No, she didn’t think that way, magnifying the little pieces of good such that she romanticized the bad—that wasn’t her.  She didn’t do that.  She didn’t.  Well, she did, but not that way that Brienne had implied—not ever once that way and—oh what if she did though?

She had thought therapy would be easy.  Well—no, she hadn’t.  She’d known it would be hard, but hard because Joffrey was hard and Meryn was cruel and not because there was anything wrong with  _her_ , just with what was done to her.  She hadn’t signed up for moments of existential crisis.  But Brienne had said—Briennne had said that she—no.  No no.  No no no.  She wasn’t—she didn’t—she couldn’t—and yet.

She was panicking.  She knew she was.  She could taste tinny adrenaline in her mouth and knew she was panicking and went into the bathroom, splashing water on her face and then sitting down on the toilet, breathing in and out, deeply in and out because her mind—she knew her mind, she knew it  _well_  but apparently it was sometimes of her own creation.

*

Tyrion yawned and glanced at the clock. It was four AM and he realized he had been in his office for eighteen hours. The scent of stale coffee filled the air from the paper cups he had tossed into his trash can and he wondered vaguely if his eyes should be losing focus like that. It wasn’t as though he had never been up all night before.

He had spent so much of the day on the phone with Selyse Baratheon, reading her prenuptial agreement over and over again, mentally kicking fucking Stannis and his lawyer Cressen Hardin for making such a knotted and overly-complicated document. He hadn’t even gotten to Joffrey’s case until eight PM, when Selyse had needed to go and call her daughter. If it had been any other case, Tyrion would have put it aside, would have said he had gotten distracted, or simply acknowledged the human reality that sometimes things come up. But this was a case for his father and his sister and, more importantly, Jaime, and he had made one of the paralegals run out for a venti triple shot from Starbucks.

Sometimes, Tyrion wondered what it would be like to be a farmer—a goat farmer, he decided—or even just not to be the son of Tywin Lannister. He felt like one or both of those would have been a significantly better deal. He could make his own cheese, maybe start a partnership with a vineyard and get a fuckton of free wine…

But alas, that was not his life, and he didn’t quite have the courage to quit his firm and learn about goats. He stretched, yawned, and went back to examining police reports.

*

He found her when she got off the train in Penn Station, sticky from the humid heat of the platform, tired, and angry.

"Dany," he called, running after her.  She ignored him, "Daenerys."  He grabbed at her arm and she wrenched it loose, pushing her way through the rush hour crowd that tries to shunt her towards the A, or the downtown CE.  She was smaller than him and could make it through cracks between people.  She was a New Yorker—she’d done this her whole life. And Daario was from California and didn’t know how to navigate a crowd.

Except, it seemed, when she most wanted to lose him.

"Dany—"

"What, Daario?" she whirled to face him, angry.  She knew he was prepared for her to be angry, but he still recoiled slightly and she feels a flash of pleasure.   _Yes.  Be afraid of me, you fucker_.

"Dany, I’m sorry."

"Sorry?  You sent me out to bumblefuck Wisconsin and said you’d meet me there.  And you didn’t.  You didn’t even send a goddamn text message.  Let go of me.  I’m done."

"Dany—"

"No.   _Fuck.  Off._ ”

She pulled her arm loose and continued pushing her way to the E and the East Side.  She’d figure out how to get her shit out of his apartment later.  For now, she was going to mom’s and the quiet, empty, clean of Park Avenue.  Even if home always made her feel isolated, anything was better than something that would remind her of Daario and she was done.  She was so fucking done.

She pushed through the turnstile into the subway and shoved her way into the last car of the E, letting the air conditioning wash over her and sinking into the communal anonymity that was the New York City Subway System.

*

She was older than him by a few years, with flashing green eyes and dark hair that she wore in a loose sideways pony tail.  She’d been his math tutor for three years, because the numbers got all muddled in his head.  It was entirely because of her that he was any good at math at all—that she’d helped him calm down and think about things more abstractly before he approached the problems in the textbook.

Lyanna was the reason he wanted to go to Dartmouth.  He didn’t really give a shit about Ivy Leagues, though he knew his mother wanted him at one, and he didn’t really give a shit about party schools, though he’d heard that they were fun from his teammates who had already gone off to college.  He wanted to go because Lyanna was there—pre-med and hiking every weekend and smiling that wide grin of hers when she thought about how peaceful Hanover was.  She said it was peaceful.  Boring, but peaceful, but hey—he was used to that, even if Hanover was more isolated than here.  It’s not like Rickon went down to New York much anyway.  The train was too annoying, and mom had gotten paranoid after the Metro North derailments.

Lyanna looked like a movie star, he decided as he got out of the car (the mini-van.  Arya still had dad’s car and he cringed inside because he didn’t want Lyanna seeing him driving the mom-mobile) but she hadn’t cared at all, she’d just grinned and he’d noticed how red her lips were—red because she’d painted them bright red and with her green eyes it looked like Christmas on her face.

"You’re going to love this movie," she said, giving him a hug.  She had small breasts, but he noticed them anyway.  He noticed everything—the way that she stood on the balls of her feet with excitement, the way that some of her mascara had flaked off on her cheek, the way that there was a bruise creeping up along her collarbone.

"What happened there?" he asked, pointing to it.

She rolled her eyes.  ”Walked into a door.  Ever the airhead,” she replied.

"You walked into a door?" he asked, not quite believing it.  Lyanna didn’t walk into doors.  She was graceful, she was quick, athletic.  Hardly the klutz.

She grinned.  ”It’s what my roommate calls it when she gets a hicky.”  She winked and Rickon felt his stomach simultaneously drop and light on fire.  

"Gotcha," was all he could say and when he bought them a medium popcorn to share, he did his best to drown his jealousy over whoever had given her that hicky in butter and salt.

*

It had been surprisingly easy—altogether too easy, even though she’d sworn she would never do it again because she couldn’t get the image of her father’s face out of her mind when she did. And besides, how long would it be before it all caught up to her?  Then what would happen?  Her mother’s face?  Her father’s face?  What if it was more than that—what if they were killed because someone found out it was  _her_  and they were  _hers_ and they wanted to hurt them to hurt her?

She’d promised herself she was done—promised that nothing would make her do it again, that she would never go back to being No One and that Jaqen could go fuck himself—they could all go fuck themselves—because No One wasn’t Arya, and Arya didn’t kill people—Arya didn’t have access to rifles and mutes that meant that she could shoot silently as well as accurately and—

He’d just fallen to the ground, two bullets to his fucking chest.  She didn’t even have to wait and see if he flailed, if she’d missed her shot in anyway—she just knew, knew that he was dead, because she’d always been good with shots—pistols, rifles, volleyball, basketball.  She’d even angled it so that his chest landed just over the sewage drain on the road so that his blood flowed conveniently down the drain because she knew too well how a body fell when you put two slugs in his chest.  Neat.  So neat.  No One was nothing if not neat.  And she’d called Waif and within two minutes, his body was gone and she’d given her Jaqen’s rifle back.

She hadn’t called Asha.  She didn’t have to.  She knew that Asha had seen from her window, had known that he was gone, and that Asha would be able to breathe easily because Theon and Jeyne were safe again.

She’d gotten back into her father’s car and only then noticed that her air was coming up in short spurts, that throat was closing around her windpipe, that there were tears on her face and her hands were shaking as she pulled off her leather gloves and no, no no, no no no she’d  _promised_ she was never going to do it again and yet here she was and how easy it had been to just kill him because god why was killing someone easy? How was it easy?  Shouldn’t it be hard?  You were killing someone, and human life was everything in this world, and yet all she needed was two shots and hot lead and then it was over—he was over.

It was funny.  She’d promised herself she’d never do it again, and god—now she  _meant_  it because she was changing her phone number and not giving it to Jaqen again because fuck him for getting her back involved with this—and it wasn’t even Theon that had made her want to, though Theon was Robb’s friend.  

It was that he’d started calling Jeyne “Arya”.  

*

"Theon?"

He jerked awake, wondering why it was dark, where he was, who he was, what was going on.  He saw Arya’s face above him, soft round brown eyes—brown—the wrong color—how could he see them if it was dark?  Maybe it wasn’t dark.  Maybe the dark was all in his head and—

"Theon?" Jeyne took his hand.  Her fingers were soft against his skin, soft—she’d used some of Asha’s lotion last night.  Asha.  They were at Asha’s.  They were at Asha’s because…

"Is he here?  Oh god—he’s here."

Jeyen was smiling—no, not smiling because when she smiled it only took up a fraction of her face—she was grinning now, grinning and laughing and looking like the world was heaven and maybe they’d died and not gone down to hell for all their sins.

"He’s not here, Theon.  He’s dead."

And for a moment, Theon thought he was dreaming.  He had to be dreaming—there was no other way that things could be this good—no other way, except if he was dreaming, and when he woke, Ramsay would know and would punish him for it and maybe he’d take another finger, or skin some of the flesh off of Theon’s feet.

He started laughing then, the panicked, horrified laughter that only comes out of your body when you are truly terrified.

"Theon?"

*

Renly was over an hour late, and Edric wasn’t surprised.

Edric had looked at his phone and saw no sign of a message from his uncle.  It was a hand-me-down flip phone, a Razr that somehow miraculously still worked, even if the screen was a little cracked on the top left-hand corner.  Renly had been through six phones since he’d given this one to Edric, but Edric had no trouble with the old Motorola—except at times like these.  It didn’t have good games on it.

He sighed and stretched and thought of texting Shireen to see if she, at the very least, was on her way home from work and could swing by the train station to get him.  He could have been on the 6:08 out of Grand Central instead of the 5:08 and he’d still be sitting here waiting for Renly.

He would have thought that after so many years, he wouldn’t be disappointed.  But it was somehow always like this when he went to visit his dad’s family. “His dad’s family” he thought very pointedly.  He didn’t delude himself anymore that his dad gave two shits about him.  But Shireen always had a smile for him, and Renly—when he was on time—made him feel welcome.  And Uncle Stannis, as he’d grown older, seemed less likely to grit his teeth and frown at him and almost smiled sometimes, especially if Edric and Shireen were laughing between themselves.  Uncle Stannis, at least, liked it when Shireen laughed, even if he still frowned whenever Edric talked about his mother.

They made a fine trio, really—a father who didn’t care, an uncle who disapproved, and the uncle who cared on the surface at the very least.  He sighed and settled onto the bench, staring out at the parking lot of the Park-and-Ride.  Renly was over an hour and fifteen minutes late now, and Edric wasn’t surprised.  Edric had learned years ago not to rely on Baratheon men.

*

She was only human. Only human and in a world of sin and depravity—brother lying with sister, men slicing skin from the bodies of the unwilling—were her sins truly so great?  And was there not sanctity in the sinful—lightness in the dark—for God had chosen what was truly holy, and in the depths of sin and horror, was there not some good to be found there?

Melisandre knew she lusted for him—she had known this for a long while now, known it as she knew her own heartbeat,  _kaThump kaThump_  in her throat, stronger, more furiously alive at the sight of him than it ever was before.  She had never thought of lust as being connected to any of the other sins, though.  Lust was separate—lust was not gluttony, or pride, or sloth—lust was none of them; lust was all of them.

How she thirsted for him, greedy for his touch, his gaze, the way that a child thirsts for her mother’s milk, the way that a dragon roosts over a pile of gold—she needed him—needed more than she’d ever needed anyone, because she had never needed anyone before.  

She knew that hell had a special corner for women like her—women who lusted for the husbands of their friends, who stole kisses in kitchens, who imagined a world where their marriage fell apart and she could keep both Selyse’s company and Stannis’ love.  

But God hated the sinner, God hated the sin, but for all God hated her and what she did, she still could find no evil in loving Stannis.

*

Arya hadn’t been home since Lyanna’s party.

At first, they had thought they had just missed her.  She’d probably stayed over at Gendry’s through the storm (even Ned would have been reluctant to drive in that rain), she’d probably gone out afterwards, maybe she was with Jon, maybe she’d just been…

But the undeniable truth was that Arya had not come home, and panic reached both Ned and Catelyn at the exact same moment.  They were sitting at the kitchen table and Sansa was quiet—rings of red around her eyes after her last session with Brienne—and Rickon was sullen and Bran was texting Jojen and Arya was not there.

Arya was gone—no note, car gone.  Her charger was in her bedroom so her phone was probably dead, or off, or something they didn’t even want to put words to.

There was no use calling the police.  They knew that.  They knew that as surely as they’d known the first time that if Arya didn’t want to be found, she wouldn’t be.  If there had been an accident, they would have heard by now.  But that wasn’t what made Catelyn grip her spoon so tightly the stainless steel made imprints on her skin.  That wasn’t what made Ned put down his coffee mug because suddenly, no matter how much sugar he put in, it would taste too bitter.

Arya disappeared when Arya wanted to disappear.  It was whatever made her want to disappear that terrified them so.

*

"What are you doing here?"  He stopped smiling about halfway through the question.  Arya didn’t look happy, or even moderately content to see him.  In fact, she didn’t look anything at all.  She looked blank, empty almost, sitting on the stoop outside his apartment building.

"Can I come in?"

Her voice sounded glum, neutral and Jon shrugged, pulling out his keys and letting them both into the building.

"What’s going on?" he asked, "I got a phone call from your mom looking for you, earlier.  They said you hadn’t been home?"

"Yeah," said Arya.  She did not elaborate.  

They climbed the stairs, not bothering to wait for the elevator which broke more often than it worked.  When they were in his apartment, Arya curled up on his couch, tucking her knees into the circle of her arms.  She looked suddenly small—so much smaller than Jon had ever noticed before.  

"Arya—"

"I can’t say," she cut him off.  "And you don’t want to know.  I could be gone by now, but I’m not.  So let’s just leave it there, shall we?"

Jon bit his lip.  ”Are you sure you can’t?  I won’t run off.  I’m a big boy with lots of big boy problems.  I can help you with yours, if you’d let me.”

She smiled a wry smile and shook her head.  ”No.  Not this one.  This one’s too much, even for you and your daddy issues.”

Jon rolled his eyes without thinking, wishing that Arya’s face would split into a grin when he did. But it didn’t.  It was compressed into a frown, tight, like a raisin or a dried prune.  ”You know, I don’t think that’s true.”

"Is that a fact," she said dryly.  It wasn’t a question

"Yes, I think it is.  You don’t know what I can take."  He thought of Rhaenys and bit his lip.  If he could keep  _that_  a secret—whatever Arya was struggling with would be nothing.

Arya opened her mouth, but didn’t say a word.  For a moment, she dropped the blank mask from her face and he saw fear, and pain, and rage, and misery etched in perfect darkness on Arya’s face.  Then she went blank again, looked him dead in the eye, and with a tone of self-loathing that Jon thought deserved some sort of award, she said “I killed a man last night.”

And for a moment, Jon wondered if he might faint.

*

"Is she nervous at all?" 

Her mother was on speaker phone in her office, and Sansa could hear the clacking of her keyboard as she typed all the way from the couch in the living room.  Sansa didn’t recognize the voice of the person her mother was talking to.

"No—I don’t think so.  She’s ever confident, Sansa.  And brave.  So very brave," her mother replied.  Sansa could hear the tension in her voice, even if the person on the phone could not.  Her mother had been tense all morning.

 _Brave_ , Sansa thought, screwing up her eyes and dropping the book she was reading over her face so she didn’t have to see the ceiling—as if the paper pages could block out her mother’s voice.   _Cowardly.  I’m the worst coward that ever lived_.  

The tears she’d been fighting since her conversation with Brienne threatened to fill her eyes yet again, and she shifted the book so that it wouldn’t get wet if and when she did start crying.

Because she felt anything but confident now.  What was there to feel confident about?  Certainly not anything she had thought before.  Because Brienne said that she cared too much what other people thought, that she used their expectations to shape herself and if that was true, how far down did it go?  Was she truly Sansa, or some being that she’d sculpted to fit everyone’s expectations of Sansa?  Who was Sansa truly?  Was Sansa anyone?  Would she ever be free?

She felt a stinging in the corner of her eyes again, and twisted her face into the couch cushion.  

"No—we expect it will be quite fast.  They’re selecting a jury for it now.  And once they do, we’ll be able to get the ball rolling.  And then we’ll be able to put this whole affair behind us."

 _You will_ , Sansa thought,  _I don’t know if I’ll ever be free of it.  Some other Sansa might be—but not me._

_*_

How strange it was, being jealous of Arya.  Not that Arya’s life was pitiable to her—no.  Never that.  It was just that Sansa had never wanted it.  Not once.  Arya and Sansa had been different growing up.  And they had argued incessantly, and to the point where her father had once threatened to make them share a room until they learned to get along with one another.

And Sansa knew that Arya struggled, that Arya grappled, that Arya was haunted by whatever it was that she didn’t want to talk about.  And perhaps Arya had grown, and changed, but at the very least, she  _knew_  that whatever conflicts were moving through the inner workings of Arya’s head, she did not have to fear that they were somehow compensating for the deepest fears of her soul.  Arya was lucky in that.  In her brutal honesty, Arya saw clearly, and if Sansa had once been frustrated by that brutal honesty, she was jealous of it now, because oh, how she wished she could be brutally honest with herself.

The world was too hard sometimes—she knew that.  She tried not to, she knew that as well.  It was one of the things that  _he_  had mocked her for when they’d been on the road—that she tried to find the good in her situation, even when her situation was…

Sansa bit her lip.  

No—she was not going to think about this or him or it or whatever. She wasn’t.  Not until she was back in Brienne’s office. She couldn’t.  She would make herself crazy if she did, and she wanted nothing less than to make matters worse by going into a spiral.  So, instead, she closed her eyes and took deep breaths, trying to calm herself, because surely, it wasn’t softening the world if she was trying to make herself calm, was it?

*

Jon hadn’t told his mother when he’d called her—he’d just told her that Arya was here, Arya was safe.  Was Arya safe?  Was it safe to be around Arya?  She hoped she was inferring those unasked questions—not hearing them in his words, because he hadn’t said a word about it, and she knew he wouldn’t, because Jon—more than anyone else in the world—had her back.  But Jon wasn’t looking at her straight anymore.  Jon wasn’t making eye contact.  He didn’t even say a word.  He just went into the kitchen and put on his tea kettle.

He didn’t ask her if she wanted to go home, didn’t ask her anything at all.  He just handed her a mug of tea and a blanket and went and grabbed his laptop out of his bedroom.  

Arya stared at the hot water as it turned slowly brown—and oh, she wished she didn’t think it looked like dried blood turned liquid, muddy and—no.  That was doing her no good at all—none whatsoever.  

She took a sip of the tea.  It was hot, and there was a smokey quality to the flavor and it made Arya think of winter and being curled up on her parents’ bed with her father, doing the crossword together on Sunday afternoons.  

If Arya were younger, she would cry—but Arya didn’t let herself cry anymore.  Sometimes, she thought if she started she would never ever want to stop and she’d cry so much that she’d shrivel up into a raisin, all liquid driven from her body.  She envied Sansa the capacity to cry.  Envied that Sansa had the strength to stop crying, that she used tears to temper her pain.

Arya didn’t have anything like that.  She only had tea that looked like blood.

*

"Happy Anniversary!" Renly sang happily, swinging his arm over Stannis’ shoulder.  "Any big plans for the evening?" he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively and Stannis clenched his jaw.

"Just dinner with everyone," said Selyse smiling in a way that seemed to be expressly designed to douse the energy of Renly’s eyebrows.

"Oh, come on now," said Renly, "You have to have  _something_  planned, Stannis.  Something good.  It’s your anniversary!  And Edric’s concepti-versary.”

Edric Storm, who had sat down quietly next to Shireen and had begun telling her about his new job blushed a shade of red that Davos would never have thought possible.  He reached out and patted the poor boy on the shoulder.

Stannis made no comment, instead, turning to Selyse.  ”You haven’t heard from Robert, have you?”

"No," she said in a mildly clipped tone.  "I know he and his wife’s family are having some…"

"What, did Joffrey go on another rampage?" demanded Renly.  "Little menace."

"No," said Selyse, "He’s still in prison.  But they’re going to court soon, so Robert’s got a lot on his plate and couldn’t make it."

"Didn’t want to make it, more like," Edric muttered under his breath.  Shireen pinched him on the thigh and he yelped.

"Shall we hit the road?" Davos asked loudly.  "We’ll be late for our reservation if we don’t head out soon."

"Where’s Mel?" asked Selyse.  "Have you heard from her, Stannis?"

"What?  Oh.  No.  Not at all."  

Davos wished he hadn’t heard the way that Stannis squawked guiltily.  If he heard it, surely the rest had too.

"Well, I’ll text her and tell her to meet us at the restaurant," said Selyse in a clipped tone.  "We wouldn’t want her to miss, would we."

 _She knows,_ Davos thought, suddenly terrified.   _She knows about it._

He stared at Stannis, wondering if he knew that his wife knew.  But Stannis was standing there, looking relieved, and Davos knew that he would have the unfortunate news of relaying that information later.

He kicked himself.  He wished he’d been able to stop it, that he’d been able to keep it from getting that far.

But, at the same time, how could he have done?  Stannis was a grown man, fully capable of fucking up his life all on his own.

*

She had heard the way that Jon’s voice clicked when he had said “Arya’s here. She’s safe.”  It was a small click, smaller by far than when he had told her that Ygritte had died and that it had been his fault, and smaller than the time that he’d called her from New York to tell her that, once again, he hadn’t run into his father.

It was the fact of that small click that made her nervous.  Jon didn’t hide things from her.  He knew that it wasn’t worth his time.  And whenever something happened that made his voice click—well, she knew it was bad.  And the fact that he was suppressing that click…it made her nervous.

Was something wrong with Arya?  Had she gotten into trouble again? Jon didn’t know what kind of trouble Arya had gotten into in the first place.  Lyanna didn’t either, but Lyanna could guess, and the guesses she had made her sad.  

She mourned that little girl, missing her two front teeth and trailing her son through the back yard, looking for Easter Eggs, the little girl who had insisted on curling up in her Aunt Lyanna’s lap because Aunt Lyanna was more exciting than her mother, the little girl who had borrowed her old college clothes to wear to a decade-themed school dance.  That little girl, that happy little Arya was gone.  She might have been gone the whole time.  But the click in Jon’s voice told her she was definitely gone now.

*

He wasn’t sure what made him go, except that she wasn’t replying to text messages and he had gotten an anxious phone call from Mrs. Stark earlier that day asking if she was still at his place.  Panic had filled him, because no one had heard from her since she’d left during their  _Lost_  marathon, and—more than that—he’d  _heard_  her on the phone, saying things like “ _How did you get this number?_ ” and ” _I’m making no promises—tell me the details and do it quickly_ ,” and her voice had been like iron when she’d said it—no hint of humor, no hint of levity.

He hadn’t told that to Mrs. Stark though.  Mrs. Stark was already worried and Gendry…well, they all knew what happened when Arya didn’t want to be found.

So he pulled up an address from his gmail that he’d gotten several years before and drove himself down to an apartment complex, ringing the buzzer for J. Snow.  Before the intercom turned on, though, a woman with a huge shopping bag came out and Gendry slipped into the building, climbing the stairs and retracing steps that he had taken to a birthday party several years before.

He knocked on Jon’s door and, when it opened, Jon looked surprised, then resigned.  He didn’t say anything, though.  He just let Gendry in.

Arya was curled up on Jon’s couch, looking small—pale and small and like a tiny doll—and staring into an empty mug of tea.  When she looked up, she stared at him, eyes wide.

"What are you doing here?"  He heard more astonishment there than anger, though there was definitely some frustration as well.

"I was worried," he said, sitting down in a chair near the couch.  

"How did you find me?" she demanded.

"You’re not as clever as you think you are," he replied.  He wanted to see if that would make her smile.  It didn’t.  

"Go away," she muttered halfheartedly.

"You’ve tried that before.  It didn’t work," Gendry said.

"I mean it.  You don’t want to be around me.  I’m a menace."

"Yeah.  I know.  Remember the time you broke my finger?"

There it was—the ghost of a smile.  ”You should have moved your hand.”

Gendry rolled his eyes more exaggeratedly than he would under ordinary circumstances.  ”Oh sure.  Blame me.”

"I will thanks," she shrugged.  Then sighed.  "I mean it, though.  You don’t want to be around me."

"And I mean it.  I’m not going anywhere.  Especially not while you’re sitting here looking like someone died.  No one died, did they?"

Arya paled but before she could answer, Jon cut in.  ”Arya,” his voice was soft.  His voice had always been softer than Gendry’s, more like a singer and less like a jackhammer, Arya had always said.  ”You should call your parents at least.  Let them know you’re ok.  You don’t have to go home, you just—They’re worried.  We’re all worried.”

She was staring at Jon, and there was something passing between them that Gendry didn’t understand and for a moment—jealousy flashed in him.  What could she tell Jon but not him?  Why was Jon more trustworthy than he was?  But he knocked it back quickly enough because there was a brightness almost like tears in Arya’s eyes.  She bit her lip and looked away.

Neither he nor Jon said a word, they just watched her, sitting there in the late-afternoon sunlight, her face blank, her eyes almost tear-bright.  It seemed that none of them was breathing. 

"Gendry?"

"Yes?"

"Can I borrow your phone?  My battery died."

*

Catelyn found Ned in the kitchen, a beer bottle in hand and a glazed look in his eyes.  She sunk down into the chair next to him and reached for the bottle.  He let her take it, let her take a long sip before she slipped it back between his fingers. 

"She’s safe," said Cat at last.

"Safe," Ned agreed, though there was a bite to the word, as though he didn’t believe it.  No—that wasn’t right—as though he simply thought it was the wrong word, as though the word ‘safety’ had many meanings, but not all of them could be applied to Arya right now.

"Jon will look after her," Cat tried again, reaching for his beer again.

"There’s a six-pack in the fridge if you want your own," he said.

"I like the taste of your lips on the bottle," she replied, smiling at him in a way that didn’t quite reach past her lips.

Ned rolled his eyes.  ”You can do better than that,” he teased lightly, and she reveled in the crinkles around his eyes.

"Fine," she conceded, "I’m lazy, and exhausted, and relieved, and all the other things I’m sure you can imagine, and all this is far from over, but I can’t bring myself to move at all."

Ned handed her his beer bottle and she took a sip.  He sighed.  ”I wish she wanted to come home.”

Cat nodded, ignoring the pang of fear in her throat.  Arya had been such a homebody lately.  That she didn’t want to come home…she refused to read too much into it.  

"Me too.  But she knows what’s best.  And Jon will help her figure it all out."

Ned sighed and plucked his bottle back from Catelyn’s hand, finishing off the last of the beer.

In the quiet twilight of the late July evening, Cat felt suddenly more aware of how different ‘peace’ and ‘quiet’ truly were.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willas, Oberyn, Ellaria, Myrcella, Tommen, Theon, Asha, Jeyne, Stannis, Melisandre, Selyse, Shireen, Lyanna Mormont, Rickon, Catelyn, Arya, Daenerys, Rhaella, Tyrion, Sansa, Robb, Viserys, Rhaenys, Beric, Thoros, Roslin, Edmure, Walda, Domeric, Jaime, Brandon, Ned, Grenn, Pyp, Quentyn, Cersei, Elia, Doran, Sandor, Bran

They told him not to move while he packed, so he didn’t—he just lay there in their bed watching as Oberyn and Ellaria jabbered away in about four languages, tossing articles of clothing into suitcases. Once or twice, one of the girls came and stood outside the door and asked a question in French (why was it that children always sounded so damn adorable in French?) and Ellaria or Oberyn—whoever was closer, would come and poke her or his head around the door so that the girl wouldn’t catch a sight of Willas lying naked in their bed.

Not, of course, that that would have made a difference.  The girls all knew Willas now, and he was quite sure that they knew what he was doing there—Elia (or La Petite Elia, as they called her, because they were going to see La Grande Elia over in New York State now) _certainly_  did, with her father’s smirk and her mother’s knowing eyes.  It was possible, that Obella didn’t, but he doubted it.  Dorea and Loreza certainly just thought that he was one of their parents friends, and a particularly good baby sitter.  Why else would he be here, after all? He was the one staying with them while their parents went state-side for a few weeks. 

“What are you grinning at?” Oberyn asked him as he zipped up his suitcase and buttoned up his shirt.

“Glad I’m not going with you.  I’m the worst at keeping a secret,” Willas replied.

“What’s to keep a secret?” Ellaria asked, adjusting her hair in the mirror and scrutinizing her makeup.  “Are we something to keep away from everyone?”

“Well…my family wouldn’t exactly get it is all,” shrugged Willas. “Going from a serious girlfriend to…”

“Fucking two unmarried monogamists?”  Oberyn supplied helpfully.

“Are you monogamists if I’m involved?” Willas asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Oh sweet professor,” Oberyn said, coming over and running his hand down Willas’ face, “I would drop everyone in an instant if she wanted me to.  And she for me.  But luckily, it doesn’t come to that.”

Willas shrugged.  He hadn’t really expected any less, of course.  “All the same—my family’s quite wasp-y.  They wouldn’t quite know how to handle it.  And…like I said.  I’m bad at keeping secrets.”

“Lucky then for their sake that we are sparing them the trouble,” Ellaria said, coming over and kissing him on the cheek.  “Any gifts you want us to send from that end?”

Willas thought of Margaery and the scarves he was thinking of getting her, of Garlan and the pocket watch, of Loras and the beret he had not yet bought, and shook his head.

“Right then,” Oberyn said.  “We’re off.  Put some clothes on while we say goodbye to the girls.”

Willas grinned and pulled himself out of the bed, hearing the chorus of “au revoir papa! au revoir maman!” from the hallway, and Petite Elia’s request for new converse and Loreza’s asking when they would be back.

*

Myrcella knew that everything was coming to a head when she got a text from Trystane. 

_Trystane Martell: I’m in town.  Want to get a drink?_

She stared at it for about four seconds before hollering for Tommen, who stumbled into her bedroom from the bathroom looking confused.  “What’s up?”

“Trys wants to get drinks,” she replied, extending her phone so that Tommen could see the screen.

“Jeez, everyone’s in town for this, aren’t they?” Tommen said.  He sounded unhappy with it, and Myrcella knew that, given his way, he wouldn’t be here at all.  He’d be back in New Haven, snuggling with Ser Pounce, but Mom had insisted that he come back for Joffrey’s trial, even though Tommen  _really_  didn’t want to be at Joffrey’s trial.

“So it would seem,” she sighed. 

“So…are you going to go?” Tommen asked.

Myrcella’s head whirled.  She thought of Robb, of Aegon, of Trystane, of why-oh-why she had such trouble keeping away from that weird bizarre knot of family because she’d never be rid of any of them if things went bad.  Trys hadn’t been bad to her.  He hadn’t even been bad for her.  But Los Angeles was far, and she wasn’t in the mood for some sort of “revisiting old haunts and fucking old exes” kind of an evening.  She really wasn’t.  She could easily chock it up to Joffrey, or Tommen staying over, or really anything.  So she shook her head, and put her phone down.   It was easy to pretend not to see a text, after all. 

“Good,” Tommen grinned.  “So,  _Homeward Bound?”_   He picked up the DVD with the two dogs and the cat and Myrcella grinned, and patted the bed next to her and he came over and curled up next to her like a cat.

*

There were four new locks on the door to Theon’s and Jeyne’s apartment when Asha arrived that morning with coffee, donuts, and a boxed set of classic Disney movies. Four new locks, however not all of them were locked, and when Theon let her in with a twitchy smile, she saw that there was something almost relaxed about his shoulders, about the way that he was holding himself.

“Things all right?” she asked him, kissing his cheek and setting the coffee down on the hall table.

“Well enough,” he said. He took the donuts from her and hobbled into the kitchen, calling over his shoulder, “Jeyne is in the living room.”

Asha found her sitting on the couch, curled around a cushion and flipping through the pages of a magazine.

“How goes it?” Asha asked her, sitting down on the arm of the couch.

Jeyne looked up at her, her brown eyes soft. She didn’t say anything though. She just reached out and took Asha’s hand and squeezed it before turning back to her magazine, as if her silence, as if her calm, could not be broken for anything.

Theon came out of the kitchen, the donuts now on a plate, which Asha thought was wholly unnecessary but it was Theon’s house, so she said nothing.

“Which one, then? Have you decided?” Theon asked.

Asha glanced at Jeyne. She hadn’t even brought up the movies in her bag, but Jeyne said, “The Lion King,” without even looking up from her magazine, and Asha produced it and went to plug it into the dvd player. When she came back to the couch, Jeyne had shifted and Theon was sitting in the middle, his arm around her, and Asha went and sat on Theon’s other side as the sun rose on the television and a flock of birds crossed the Savannah.

*

Stannis watched her sleep, the way that her bared breast rose and fell above the duvet, the way that her hair fluttered as she breathed. She was so beautiful. Beautiful and red—her hair, her lips, her nipples—red and exquisite and fine—so very fine. Selyse was brown and dull, even her nipples were more brown than red, and the hair above her lip…

Selyse was a good wife. She’d raised Shireen well. And she had kept a good house, but Selyse was…colorless. Even her faith was less exciting than Melisandre’s, more a badge to show that she believed and less fire and fervor than Mel had in her slightest whispers of Oh god as he had pushed into her.

And he was married to her—married to Selyse and adultering—no use putting a finer word on it, as that was what it was—with Melisandre. Part of him—a cowardly part of him—hoped Selyse would find out and leave him, and he could just stay in Melisandre’s apartment forever. It was largely bare. She did not have an excess of furniture, nor did she have a great deal of art. Just what she needed, just what was needed, and Stannis knew that this was right for him…and yet he also knew that it was wrong for him. Wrong, because his home, his wife and the house that they’d raised their daughter in—that was across town, waiting for him. And yet he wasn’t sure he could leave, wasn’t sure he wanted to leave, because she was so warm against him, and ducking out while she was still asleep seemed wrong. Wrong, and rude, and cowardly. The least he could do was wait until she waked…wait, and hope that it would be simpler when she did.

*

Oh god, Lyanna knew he had a crush on her. How could she not? It was so obvious. He was such a great big puppy dog, with his red curls and his bright blue eyes and that hopeful expression every time she saw him. He was thoroughly adorable.

But that was just the problem, wasn’t it? Because if he had a crush on her—which he did—then what was she supposed to do about it? Like, realistically speaking. She was in college, and he was about to be a senior, and there was all the chance in the world that he would go off to some other school. She know he said he  liked  Dartmouth, but liking Dartmouth and getting in and going were wholly different things. And she was definitely the type to enjoy a little fling on the side—that’s for sure. She had had summer screws before. Half the fun of it was sneaking them past her sisters, not that any of them really cared. But in any case, the way that Rickon looked at her…he was not…looking for a summer screw. He was looking for a girlfriend, and being his girlfriend didn’t make sense because she was going to be gone up to Hanover in a few weeks and then what would they do? Skype. Gchat. Text. But that wasn’t a relationship—at least, not the way that she wanted one. It would be a whole different ball game if he were there with her, going to frat parties and getting drunk and going home and screwing, but he wasn’t there and was she supposed to just drop everything she wanted to do for some kid who wasn’t even legal yet?

But then again, she couldn’t just drop him, either. He was such a sweetheart, for all he had a bit of a temper. What did tempers matter? Hell—she had a bit of a temper too. But cutting Rickon out of her life…she definitely didn’t want that.

*

It was eight o’clock and Arya still hadn’t shown up, and Catelyn stuck her head out the front door, as if hoping to see Jon’s car driving up the street. she didn’t though, and she sighed and pulled out her phone, really wishing that—she didn’t know what. She didn’t know what to wish for right now, there was so much  to  wish for and—

Arya picked up on the third ring. “Hi mom.”

“Where are you?” She did her best not to sound agitated, not to sound snippy. She knew that Arya was…going through things. But if there was one thing that Arya knew, it was that family was important. Never once had Arya put herself before family, and—

“I’m at Jon’s.”

“Are you coming today?” Should she be coming today? Catelyn didn’t know what was going on with Arya. She hadn’t told them very much. But if Arya was staying away…

“Yes. I’ll meet you there though. I’m having a slow start,” Arya replied.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come round for breakfast?” Catelyn asked. She knew she shouldn’t wheedle, that she should accept that Arya was grown now, that her little girl wasn’t so little anymore, but all the same…she wanted her home, damn it. She really wanted her home.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Arya replied a little uneasily. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

“See you soon,” Catelyn sighed, and she hung up the phone.

*

Her mother’s apartment was smaller now than it had seemed growing up. Or at least, that was what it felt like. Dany was older, bigger, taller, and rooms that had been full of furniture were now sparse. Her mother hadn’t been one for keeping things that she didn’t want to keep, and when dad had been put away, mom had gotten rid of  a lot . Dany missed a fair amount of the old things. She’d liked climbing onto some of the antique furniture, dark wood carved to look like dragons and lions. It had made the apartment seem like a castle—as much like a castle as the Frick had ever seemed, anyway, and Dany could pretend that she was a princess. Sometimes she could even get Viserys to play along with her, though usually he had homework to do.

But she was glad of the quiet now, of the bareness of the place. Her own apartment was loud and full of people all the time, colors and brightness and community. Her mother liked to be alone, and liked it when her children dropped in. Her mother didn’t ask what was wrong, nor did she ask Daenerys really anything. Her mother had a tendency to wait until you were ready to share.

When she’d been little, and she had played at princess, she had imagined her mother to be the best queen of all time, one who truly understood those she ruled over. Older now, Dany wasn’t so sure, but she was a good mother, at least. She knew what it was to have her heart broken, and knew that sometimes in order to escape the world, all you needed was your own little corner of peace and quiet.

*

Tyrion entered the courtroom to find the entire Stark family seated in the front row, including, he noted while resisting the urge to raise his eyebrows, Ned’s siblings and Lyanna’s wife’s siblings.  He hadn’t expected to see Doran and Oberyn Martell, and had been quite sure that Oberyn lived abroad, but there they were, all seated in one neat little bundle of people.  He didn’t let himself sigh as he proceeded down the aisle and went to sit at his desk. 

Joffrey hadn’t been brought in yet, and Cersei had not yet arrived, so he sat, completely alone at his desk.  He focused on pulling his files out of his briefcase and straightening them on the desk, doing his best to ignore the hushed whispers from the gathered family to his right. 

Once, he made the mistake of looking over at Sansa Stark.  He wished that he hadn’t.  She was sitting there between her parents, her hands clasped on her lap, looking pale and staring at the barrier in front of her with the detached expression of someone who looked like they were trying too hard not to feel anything at all. 

 _What must they think of me_ , he wondered, looking back at his notes.  _That I’m defending the monster that did that to her?_  It almost made him feel ill.

*

She could hear Brienne’s voice in her head: “Just breathe.  In and out.  Deeply—down to your toes, then back up through your nose. Don’t forget to breathe.  And if it gets to be too much, just remove yourself.  No one will think any the less of you.” 

She knew all that, of course.  It was impossible not to know it, given everything.  How many times had she forced herself to breathe while she’d been in the back of Joffrey’s car, sitting between Meryn and the Hound as they passed farms and fields and school buses on the highway.  She knew how to breathe.  She knew how to make herself calm, make herself not feel a thing.  That was how she’d gotten this far.

It was different now.  It was different because she had her parents with her, and her siblings down the row, and even Aunt Lyanna’s in-laws out to show their support.  She was surrounded by people who loved her, people who knew what had happened to her, people who would stand between her and pain in a heartbeat. 

But they couldn’t stop her from hurting.  Oh no—they couldn’t. They also couldn’t stop her from going dead inside.  Not even Brienne could do that, though she knew they would talk about it later, about why she did that, about why she pushed everything away and locked it up in her head and made it safe before she touched it again.  They would probably spend more time talking about that than they would about how her hands were trembling so badly that she had to hold them in her lap, and that even as she did, she remembered the Hound’s voice in her ear as Joffrey stopped the car.  “Give him what he wants.  It’ll be easier for you.” 

Give them all what they want—it’ll be easier for her.  That was the problem, wasn’t it? 

What did they want, though?  They wanted her to be better, they wanted none of this to ever have happened, they wanted her to smile and show them that she was all right and that this wasn’t going to be that bad, but it was, and she couldn’t lie to them, because if she lied to them, how fast would that turn into her lying to herself, and she needed to stop doing that, she needed to because if she didn’t how much worse could things get?

*

Robb made a fist in his slacks when Joffrey was brought into the courtroom. His golden curls had been buzzed away, and he was wearing an orange jumpsuit, and he leaned back lazily in his chair next to his uncle, a slight smile curling on his lips as he did.

“Leave it,” Jon whispered in his ear, grabbing his wrist. “Don’t make anything worse.”

“I want to punch him. Can I punch him?”

“No. Leave it.” Jon’s grip on his wrist was viselike and Robb sighed and relaxed his hand. “Trust me—this is already bad enough for everyone. You punching Joffrey wouldn’t help anything.”

“It would make me feel better,” Robb grumbled.

“Yeah. I think it would make us all feel better. But it also might get you arrested, so let’s not, ok?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Robb didn’t take his eyes off Joffrey though, didn’t stop glaring at him. Joffrey didn’t look over at him, but he didn’t care. He didn’t expect him to.

Joffrey had always been an arrogant shit growing up, and he was an arrogant shit now. The way he stood, slowly, as though to show he was only doing it because he had to when the judge entered the courtroom, made anger pulse through him.

“I’m going to go to the bathroom. Put water on my face.” Robb whispered to Jon.

“Do I need to come with you?” Jon asked.

“No. I’m not going to do anything stupid. But I need to calm down.”

“Ok.”

Robb stood and edged out of the row, passing Arya on Jon’s other side, her expression black, and Bran in the aisle in his chair, his face carefully neutral. He walked up the aisle and wished he didn’t notice Myrcella, sitting in the back row of the courtroom with Tommen, looking thoroughly miserable. If anything, that made him angrier.

*

Viserys knew he probably shouldn’t be there—no, he knew he definitely shouldn’t be there. He had no reason to—none at all. It wasn’t as though Rhaegar had actually kept up with this part of the family. Rhaegar had whined a lot, and written a lot of heartbroken songs for his harp, and then promptly dropped out of his children’s lives. Rhaegar had never cared about connecting Viserys or mom or Dany to them.

But here he was, sitting in a cafe in the center of town, three blocks from the courthouse because Rhaenys had texted him the night before.

_God help me, this is going to be rough_ _,_  she’d said, and he’d asked her if she wanted him to come up on Metro North and she’d said yes.

He did his best to read his book as he sat there. It was a college town—there were always people reading books in cafes. He didn’t have anything to feel nervous about. And besides, Rhaegar hadn’t set foot here in ages, and Rhaenys said that he didn’t look much like Aegon and Rhaegar, so even no one could make the connection.

All the same, it was more nerve-wracking to be here, in some small town, than it was to be in New York, where he and Rhaenys could lose themselves in ten million people and not worry about anyone or anything. When she said that he didn’t look like Aegon, what did that mean? When she said that he wouldn’t be recognized—how would she know?

He checked his phone several times, hoping she’d text him, hoping she’d at least let him know how the trial was going. He didn’t care about the Starks at all, but he cared that Rhaenys cared, and if it was going badly…

He felt like a shitty person for wanting it to, for wanting Rhaenys to be upset, to want  him  to comfort her when her family was reeling an shocked and appalled and hurt. They’d go off in her car and find some remote road and he’d comfort her, and then she’d send him back down to the city, feeling slightly better, because at least he could do that much for her.

He’d do anything for Rhaenys—do anything, be anything she wanted. And he never really got the chance to show it.

*

in shouldn’t make you feel happy. Sin shouldn’t make you feel glorious. It should make you feel horrible, terrible, worthless. Piety and goodness should make you feel as though the world was perfect. And yet, Melisandre’s sins made the world feel a brighter place than ever her piety had.

Stannis had left, gone off to work, and she couldn’t be bothered dressing at all, or going about her usual routine. So she just lay there in bed, naked and sore from loving him, staring at the ceiling and relishing in the feeling of the air on her bared breast.

She felt more alive loving him, felt more whole loving him. And, though she knew that the flesh was sinful, how could she not feel as though everything was right when she felt the breeze from her air conditioner across her body. She would never have noticed it otherwise. Did not her sin make her more aware? Did not her sin make her, in some odd way, better? For how unaware she had been of herself, she felt—how wholly blind to her own mind and body until she’d taken Stannis between her legs.

No, sin shouldn’t make you feel happy. It shouldn’t make you feel fulfilled. And yet hers did.

*

“Come on Carebear, you need a vacation.”

Beric rolled his eyes.  He hated that fucking nickname.  But Thoros was drunk again, so there was no use trying to get him  _not_  to call him that.  Thoros  _would_  be drunk right now.  They were on fucking duty, and the trial was going on just on the other side of the doors, and there he was, drinking lightly from his flask, not giving a shit about the trouble he could end up in if he was caught.

“No, I don’t,” Beric replied.

“When,” Thoros asked, “was the last time that you actually went somewhere for fun?”

“I,” Beric said stonily, “have plenty of fun, thank you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“What was the last thing you did for fun?”

“I took Ned to a baseball game.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

Beric frowned. It had been for Ned’s birthday.  He’d gotten tickets to the Yankee-Red Sox game and had taken the train down to the city. He’d met Ned’s two sisters—the dancer and the other one and they’d had dinner and…

“Shit.”

“When was it?”

“Three year ago.”

“Take a fucking vacation, Carebear.”

*

She heard the front door slam and sat bolt upright, her heart pounding. “Hello?”

“Edmure?” He wasn’t supposed to be back yet. He was supposed to be in Tokyo for another week.  What was he—

“Ros?  What are you doing here?”  He poked open the door to the bedroom and saw her sitting on his bed in her underwear.  A grin crossed his face.  “Hello there.”

“Hi,” she replied.

“Not that I’m complaining, or anything, but…”

“Your uncle is here.”

“My…?”

“Brynden.”

Edmure frowned.  “What’s he doing here?”

“He’s asleep.  He’ll explain when he wakes up.”  She was  _not_  going to try and tell him Brynden’s story.  God only knew she wasn’t sure if it was the truth or not.  “I thought you were supposed to be in Tokyo.”

He came over and sat on the bed, and began taking off his shoes. 

“Sansa’s trial was moved up. So I came back early.  Took some days.”  He frowned.   “Didn’t I email you?”

“Not anything I’ve gotten.”

“Oh.  Sorry.”  He glanced at her sheepishly, and leaned down, pressing a kiss to her ankle.  “There haven’t been any messages from Cat, have there?”

Roslin shook her head.  Edmure sighed and rubbed his face, yawning.  “I should get over there, but I’m wiped.” 

“By the time you did, the day would be over, wouldn’t it?” she asked. “I mean, it’s not a one-day trial.”

“No,” Edmure agreed.  “It’s not.  It’s really not.”  Then he looked over at her, and she saw a bright glint in his eyes.  “I like coming home to you.”

“Well, if you like it put a ring on it.  Oh wait….” she grinned down at her engagement ring, and Edmure slid up the bed, his lips connecting with her neck and his hands coming to rest on her breasts.  Roslin giggled.  “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Me too,” he said.

*

“Have you seen Ramsay?” Domeric asked, coming in to the kitchen. He looked tired. His face was paler than usual and his hair was mussed. Walda assumed that he had just awoken.

“No. I have not. Not since you two showed up with Edmure Tully in your trunk the other day.” Walda went back to the coffee maker and filled up a second mug. She didn’t see why he was here. Roose had told both of his sons that they were supposed to clear out  ages  ago, and yet Domeric continued to come here instead of going home to his own apartment. Part of her wondered why. Another part of her assumed that he kept corpses in his bedroom and needed to keep away from the stench somehow.

“Hmm.” Domeric leaned against the counter, and Walda poured him a mug of coffee, largely because he was too close to her not to. Little shit and his power plays. “He’s not one to stay away, or shut up.”

“No. He’s not,” she agreed.

“Fucker probably did something stupid.” Domeric pulled out his phone and began tapping away furiously on the screen. “Fuck, I fucking  told  him—Dad’ll skin him alive.”

Domeric drifted out of the kitchen, leaving his coffee mug behind.

Walda glared at the mug, then dumped it into the sink and watched the coffee swirl down the drain. She  hoped  that he  _had_ done something stupid and that Roose  _would_  skin him alive. Both of those damn boys needed to learn some fucking lesson or other. Maybe, at the least, they would get out of her house at last.

*

“There are so many Lannisters here,” Oberyn murmured to Doran, his eyes never leaving the back of Tywin Lannister’s head. “Please tell me—“

“Hush. Now is not the time,” Doran breathed back. His eyes flickered between Tywin Lannister and Tyrion Lannister, who was now asking a witness to the fire in Pennsylvania several questions.

“Then  when  is the time?” demanded Oberyn.

“Not when we’re in the same room as them. Over drinks later tonight. At Elia’s.”

And that had been that. Oberyn leaned back on the bench, and taken Ellaria’s hand in his, and stared at Tywin Lannister with what he was sure was unbridled rage.

When the court adjourned for the day, he was one of the first on his feet, letting go of Ellaria’s hand and skirting around her to intercept Jaime, ignoring the hiss of “Oberyn!” from both Elia and Doran.

“Jaime,” Oberyn said, hitching a bright smile onto his face. “It has been a while.”

Jaime Lannister raised his eyebrows, thoroughly surprised to see him there. “Hello. How was the….flight?” His tone rose a little too high in the last word, as though he weren’t entirely sure where Oberyn was these days.

“It was smooth. AirFrance has good wine,” Oberyn shrugged. “And how is Rhaegar these days? Have you heard from him?”

Jaime blinked and Oberyn saw the way his hand twitched. “I told Elia that I haven’t heard from him,” he said a little too neutrally to be honest.

“So I’ve heard. And yet, you and I both know that—“

“If I’d heard from Rhaegar, I would tell Elia. Do you think I like that he’s being an ass to his children?” Jaime asked.

“Well, as I recall, you might.” Oberyn inched closer to him. He could see every pore on Lannister’s face, and what wouldn’t he give to break his nose, just because he could. He could do it—and easily, and then what would Tywin Lannister do? He wouldn’t be able to pretend it hadn’t happened and—

He felt Elia’s hands—Elia’s because they seemed gentle but her grip was like iron; Ellaria would have just grabbed him—circle around his upper arm. “Oberyn, love, can you help Doran to the car?”

He tilted his head ever so slightly and looked down at his sister.

“ Absolutely ,” he muttered through a clenched jaw and turned away from Jaime Lannister.

One day, he would break that man’s teeth and laugh over it.

*

Brandon took another swig of his whiskey, emptying the tumbler and calling out to the bartender to fill him up another one.

He didn’t give a shit about whatever his doctors said. He was  not going to stop drinking. Even if that meant an early grave. He’d always assumed he’d die young anyway. He wasn’t one for longevity, for legacy, for whatever. That was why Cat had chosen Ned. That was why Lyanna had chosen Elia. That was why Brandon had chosen whiskey. Whiskey, at least, was never disappointed in him. Whiskey, at least, would be sad if he gave up on it. Wiskey, at least, still enjoyed Brandon’s time. And Whiskey, at least, would never let him down.

Fuck, why had they all decided to grow up and make him feel like some fucking Peter Pan, stuck in neverland and eternal childhood? Why did Lyanna think it was ok to say “please, Brandon, do this for me,” when it was  Lyanna  who had said “Do whatever the fuck you want. I don’t give a shit,” in the first place. Everyone had expectations of him—always had, always would. He needed to take care of the younger siblings. He needed to be responsible. He needed to be mature. He needed to think of the future. No. Fuck all that. That wasn’t fun. That wasn’t productive. And sometimes he felt like none of them understood it. Ned had certainly beaten it out of his kids pretty young. Rickon was wild, but Rickon also knew when to stop. And his wasn’t so much as a need for wildness as a need to prove himself, and it  wasn’t  about proving yourself, it was about proving that everything else  wasn’t . The only one who seemed to have any sense of nihilism was Arya, and even she seemed to be pulling a Lyanna and getting boring.

She’d been his last hope, really—the last hope that someone would get it in the end. She even looked like Lyanna, too, and played volleyball and everything. And when she’d gone missing, Brandon had hoped…but she came back and had gotten boring and fuck he was all alone except for the whiskey.

*

Mother was sniping at Uncle Tyrion, Uncle Jaime was tyring to get them both to be quiet, Grandfather was talking over everyone, and Tommen was lying on the floor, texting Robert and doing his best to ignore everyone around him. Tommen got some things right some times. Tommen had learned young to shut everyone out.

Myrcella had a little more trouble with that. Sure, she looked like she wasn’t paying attention, staring out the windows at the rain clouds over head, tracing her fingers on the drops of water on the panes of glass in front of her, but their agitation was enough to keep her from being anything close to calm.

And, to make matters worse, all three of them had been there: Trys, Robb, and Aegon. All of them had been sitting near one another, on the other side of the aisle. (How oddly like a wedding this whole thing was. Defendant’s side and prosecutor’s side. Which side are you on? The defendant’s? That’s to your left then. Welcome, welcome to the trial of Joffrey Baratheon, defendant’s side or prosecutor’s side?) All three of them had been there and not one of them had said hello, not one—as if she were tainted just by being related to Joffrey, when she wasn’t anything like him, when the things that he had done kept her up at night, and Tommen was  still  scared of him.

Thunder rumbled overhead. She liked summer thunderstorms. She liked that they came and went and in their wake there was calm. She hoped that this would be more like a summer thunderstorm and less like a category million hurricane.

*

“Daenerys?”

Mother never called her Dany.  Never.  It had been Viserys’ nickname for her, because he thought Daenerys was a mouthful (but god forbid she call him Vissy in return).  To friends, sometimes, she was even Dan—even shorter, even more manageable, but to Mother, she was always Daenerys. 

“Yes?” she pulled herself from her bed and went out into the hallway.  Her mother was standing there with a two mugs of tea and a book of kenken puzzles. 

“Do you want to do a puzzle with me?”

“All right.”

She heard the swish of rainy wind—Mother always kept the windows open in a storm.  She thought that the stormy air would air out the apartment more effectively than anything else.  Dany wondered also if it might be because the dampened air was fool and wet and let her mother clean away the feeling of fire.

They sat together in the dining room, drinking their tea and calculating answers, putting answers in place, and making everything neat and orderly.  Mother didn’t smile (mother never smiled) but mother wasn’t frowning.  Her face was smooth, impassive, neutral, and for a moment, Dany could forget Daario and his fucking half-assed attempts at loving her.

*

She felt all of their eyes on her—every single one of them as she came into the court room again the next morning and seated herself between her mother and father again.  So many eyes, so many people—cousins and in-laws she hadn’t even realized cared about all this, but there they were, sitting on hardwood benches and watching her.

Her mouth was dry, her fingers tense as they knotted together in her lap and she stared at the barrier in front of her—not at Joffrey, whose hair had been buzzed away in prison, making his face look pinched and so much less handsome than she’d once thought it, not at his uncle who was serving as his defender, or at the lawyers representing the state. 

She did look up when the defense called Jaime Lannister to the stand, and for a moment, her breath caught in her throat because he—with his golden curls and flashing green eyes—he looked just like Joffrey.  Too much like Joffrey.

She’d heard whispers, of course.  But she’d never believed them at all.  Who would do that—sleep with…no.  She couldn’t believe it.  But Joffrey was Jaime only younger, and when he smirked at his brother from the stand, it was Joffrey’s smirk, and Sansa wondered what would happen if it were true, if she did believe it.  Would it matter?  Could it matter?  Did it matter?

She looked back at her hands, and listened.

*

She knew she shouldn’t be nervous being there.  No one knew anything, and the police man sitting in the enclosed area near Joffrey was fat and she could outrun him easy if she needed to.  Not that she’d need to.  She didn’t need to—wouldn’t need to.  Because no one knew anything.  No one knew a damn thing, it had all been cleaned up properly and there wasn’t even a whisper in the wind of what had happened.  Of that, she was completely sure.

But that didn’t stop her from sweating as she sat there, even though she was sitting under an air conditioning vent, even though she was surrounded by people who would insist there was some mistake if someone—anyone—were to come in and try and take her away. They wouldn’t be able to, they wouldn’t.

But that wasn’t what Arya was most scared of.  Arya was most scared of someone taking note that she was sitting between her father and Jon and thinking,  _ah hah.  So it’s those two_.  She was most scared that someone would notice that her eyes were flicking down the row, from strange face to strange face, taking stock of each one and scrutinizing whether or not any of them were watching her.

Arya was most scared that someone would see that her father’s hand was in hers, that he was squeezing it as the testimonies wound on, and that she squeezed it back.

*

Pyp had known Grenn his whole life.  His whole entire life.  Grenn had been the kid who would always bike up the street to make sure—to make absolutely sure—that Pyp didn’t want to come and play soccer with them in the park.  Pyp had never been much of an active person, and usually he told Grenn that he was in the middle of a book, or a level in Zelda, and had told him “next time,” even if Pyp and Grenn both knew that this  _was_  “next time.”  They also both knew that Grenn would be back, in a day, or a week, riding his bike down the street to see if Pyp wanted to come and play kickball this time.

They’d always been good friends—even in high school when you can’t be friends with people who are too different.  Grenn had never cared that Pyp was weedy and a clarinet player while he was on the football team.  He never cared a second at all, and the two of them spent hours it seemed studying for their US History AP because neither of them got it half so quick as Sam, and Sam was insufferable to study with.   Neither of them knew how Jon put up with him, and they felt disloyal for saying so as they quizzed one another about the Gilded Age.

And Grenn had kissed him.  Grenn.  Had kissed him.  In the rain while drunk and Pyp hadn’t heard from him since.  Hell, he wasn’t sure if Grenn even remembered it, but Pyp certainly couldn’t stop thinking about it.  He curled around his comforter each night and it was soft and big and warm and he could pretend it was Grenn because Grenn had kissed him, and that had to mean something, right?

*

Mel came home to a dozen long-stemmed red roses with baby’s breath in a vase outside of her apartment and a note in computerized calligraphy that red,  _Because you have bewitched me_ , and she smiled.  Stannis would leave a card unsigned—out of nervousness, or out of the simple, and correct, assumption that she would know who was sending her the flowers. 

She put them by her bed, on the bedside table that was nearest the window and watched them.  They filled the otherwise white room with a spot of color, a spot of blood, or love, or fire and it was all because of Stannis.  She pulled out her phone and texted him,  _they are beautiful_. 

Stannis didn’t like text messages.  He thought they were too transient, and allowed people to get away with a lack of concise precision that he abhorred.  But he never got angry when Mel texted him.  He might grit his teeth, but he never said a word, and she imagined him, gritting his teeth and not saying a word over that text because on the one hand, she’d texted him, but on the other hand it was a good text.

*

Loath though Quentyn was to admit it—and he really didn’t want to admit it—things were strange with all of them there except Arianne. The dinner that they all had—him and Trystane and dad and Uncle Oberyn and Ellaria—it had been full of energy (it couldn’t not be with Uncle Oberyn and Ellaria back from Paris), but there had been something off about it.

Uncle Oberyn had had stories of Arianne, of course. Stories of her turning up drunk at his apartment, or sneaking les petites serpentes out of the house to go shopping, or simply of coming home to find her reading on his couch, but stories of Arianne and Arianne being there…they weren’t the same. One felt like the sun on a hot summer’s day, the other felt like a UV lamp in the middle of winter when you’re trying not to get Seasonal Affective Disorder.

“Arianne’s sad not to be here, of course,” Ellaria had sad when they had arrived from Paris. “But plane tickets and all that.”

The uncharitable part of Quentyn wondered if she truly was sad not to be there, or if she had gone off and been brilliant and left them all behind. It was entirely possible, after all.

He did try not to notice it—he did. But whenever he heard her name, he glanced over at Trystane and wondered if Trystane felt the same way, or if he—like everyone else—missed Arianne and didn’t feel her ghost at the table.

*

Sansa was rinsing her hands in the bathroom when she heard the toilet flush in a stall behind her and she looked up to find Cersei Lannister glaring at her in the mirror, with big green eyes and a glower that looked just like Joff’s.

“And are you well?” Cersei asked, standing in the sink right next to Sansa’s, even though there were plenty of other empty sinks that she could have used. Sansa reached for the soap dispenser, but Cersei’s hand was already there, pumping pink goo into her hand—probably more than she needed.

“Yes,” Sansa replied, her voice halfway between a whisper and gulp.

“Good!” Cersei’s voice was strong, determined, and when she moved her hand away from the soap dispenser, Sansa reached over again and took some soap, squeezing it between her hands, letting the pink turn to a white lather. “Good, I should hope. This all must be very pleasant for you, I imagine.”

_As pleasant as tearing your teeth out one by one_ , Sansa thought, but she just kept rubbing her hands together, focusing on getting them clean.

Cersei was still watching her in the mirror, Sansa knew it. She was watching her and glaring a glare that didn’t match the simper on her lips and Sansa refused to look—she re fused .

“Well, I will see you in there,” Cersei said, reaching for a paper towel and turning away. “Oh, And Sansa. If he is found guilty I will make your life hell.”

And she was gone, already swishing past the door back to the hallway and Sansa hadn’t realized that she was holding her breath until she exhaled slowly out her nose.

“You already did that just by giving birth to him,” she said to the empty room, her voice echoing off the tile. Sansa ran her hands under the water, amazed at how still they were.

 *

“It’s good of you all to come by,” Cat said, and Ned saw the way the corners of her mouth twisted, and he knew that she wished that Stannis and his family and Selyse’s friend hadn’t come to dinner. Cat hardly had the energy to entertain, even if Selyse had brought over two lasagnas and a pie for them all to eat, insisting that they were all too busy to cook. Too busy to cook, but not to have them over for dinner.

He knew Robert was behind it, of course. Robert, who couldn’t actually come over because it would make everything more complicated, but could make his younger brother come over at the very least, completely ignoring the fact that Ned and Stannis didn’t really know each other very well. He probably hadn’t even cared, in typical Robert fashion, and had simply been pleased at his ingenuity.

“These just need another half hour in the oven,” Selyse said and she and Cat went into the kitchen, leaving Ned alone with Stannis, Shireen, and Melisandre. Where  were  his children? They should be out here by now, greeting the guests, but he supposed that Rickon and Bran only wanted to escape everything, and Sansa…well, of course they wouldn’t have Sansa do anything she didn’t want to. And Arya of course was still going home to Jon’s every night.

“The ride over…there wasn’t too much traffic?” Ned asked Stannis.

“No.”

Stannis had always been one for one-word replies. Of that, Ned had always been aware.

“Well…would you like to come and sit down. Can I get you a drink?”

“I don’t drink,” said Stannis. Amazing that he was Robert’s brother.

“I’ll have a glass of wine, if you have a bottle open,” said Melisandre.

“We don’t, but we’ll have some with dinner, so it’s no trouble to open one up. Red or white?”

“White, please.”

He went into the kitchen and took a bottle out of the refrigerator, shooting Cat a commiserating look as Selyse jabbered on at her about how difficult this must all be.

When he reached the living room again, Melisandre had shifted seats so that she was sitting next to Stannis, and Ned had a horrible feeling about what precisely had made them invite her to come with them to begin with.

*

“Come to bed,” he whispered, leaning over her and kissing her neck. 

“I can’t.  I’m so behind on emails,” she sighed.  It was nearly eleven o’clock.  Stannis and Selyse and the rest had stayed until just after nine, and the cleanup, while minimal, had still taken longer than Cat would have liked.

“Cat—you are on vacation,” he said.  He was resting his head full on her shoulder now and she closed her eyes, letting the warmth from his cheek fill her.  “They understand if you don’t reply to your emails while all this is going on.  Come to bed.  You’re exhausted.”

“Five minutes,” she said.

“All right.”

But he did not move, he just left his head on her shoulder while she clicked through her email account, feeling her nervousness only augment as she read through chains asking for budget clarity, and for information about funders.

After five minutes, Ned reached over and closed her laptop on her fingers even as she was hitting send on an email.  “Ned!” she said, turning her head and snapping at him. 

“You said five minutes, and you aren’t very good at your own limits sometimes.  This can and will all wait.”

“So will bed,” she said, doing her best not to sound…what—haggard? Peevish?  Angry?

“If you say so,” he shrugged, straightening up, and her cheek felt cold without his pressed to it.  Ned yawned and she could tell without looking at him that he was stretching.  “I’ll see you when you come up, then,” and she heard his footsteps recede. 

She was out of her chair so quickly that she hadn’t realized she was following him until she was on the stairs, reaching for his hand, warm in hers, strong. 

And when she undressed for bed, she didn’t put on her nightgown.

*

It was different, sleeping with Viserys upstate.  It felt dirtier. 

She wasn’t an idiot, she knew she was sleeping with her uncle.  She knew that she was in love with him.  But all the same, somehow filing it under “New York City Depravity” in her head made it seem less weird, more normal, under the umbrella of whatever the fuck went on in New York City.

But making excuses—headache.  Migraine.  I need to lie down—to her family and then going and getting a motel room with Viserys, who stripped her out of her clothing and fucked her on the floor because the bed was too far away from where they were…well, maybe it was the motel that made it feel dirtier.  Usually she and Viserys slept in a bedroom, in Viserys’ apartment in the Financial District, and she felt perfectly normal doing it there.  But a motel within a ten minute walk from the train station…that…

Rhaenys had never been a daring one.  Daring was for Aegon, and for Jon who was always trying to prove that he was just as much their dad’s kid as Aegon.  Rhaenys wasn’t.  The most daring thing she’d ever done in her life was Viserys, and finding him after years of distance was the best thing that ever happened to her.

*

It was her mom who told her.  Well, she had worked it out for herself, but her mom was the one who confirmed it.  Well, she didn’t really confirm it so much as tell Shireen not to tell dad, but that she was looking into their pre-nup and would likely be filing divorce papers before the summer was out.

Shireen had sat there, cold as ice looking at her mother’s face, the way her lips were pursed making the hair on her upper lip stick out even more than it usually did, both in color and in…weight, Shireen supposed?  She hadn’t been able to ask mom what prompted it, because she had a suspicion her mother would lie, even if  she  _did_ know, saying that they had gone their separate ways as Shireen had grown up, gone to college, found a job and moved out, the works. People grow and change, that was what her mother had always told her, after all.  People find interests elsewhere.

She hoped her mother found new interests the way that her dad had.  She hoped that mom had a hot young someone to sneak off with surreptitiously.  But somehow, she doubted it, and that made her heart ache.

She had breakfast that morning with Melisandre and her father, both of whom were smiling—her father was actually smiling!—as Melisandre described her experience in Mali a few years before, chewing a mango and shooting sideways glances at dad. 

 _You’re supposed to be mom’s friend_ , Shireen thought watching as she cut up a new fruit and put pieces of them on each of their plates.  _You’re supposed to be loyal to_ her _._

And anger flared in Shireen, hot white anger that was all the more violent because Shireen was not the type to get angry easily.  _I hate you_ , she thought, biting bitterly into the mango.   _I really hate you right now._

_*_

“Your phone is buzzing, Daenerys,” her mother said absently as Dany cleared their plates from the table and rinsed out the take-out containers to put in the recycling.

“I know,” Dany said, glancing at where it was charging on the counter. She didn’t need to look at it carefully to know that it was Daario.

Her mother didn’t say anything. Her mother tended not to. Her mother was sparse with words and always had been, but when Dany sat down opposite her with a carton of strawberry ice cream and two spoons, she saw a flicker of curiosity in her mother’s eyes.

“He’s the fucker who sent me out to Wisconsin and back,” Dany muttered, opening the carton and stabbing the pink ice cream with a spoon.

“Ah,” said her mother. She picked up her own spoon and scraped some off the side of the container, popping it delicately into her mouth. “And you’re not going to forgive him, then?”

“I don’t think so,” Dany said, thinking of just how small she had felt while sitting there on the platform, just how low. She didn’t need that in her life.

“Good,” and for the first time since she’d come home, her mother’s voice was dark. “Don’t forgive the ones who hurt you, Daenerys. Do not let them think they can do it again.”

*

He got a text from Pyp in the early afternoon.  _Want to see the new Spiderman? I haven’t gone yet_ ,  and because he couldn’t say no to Pyp, and he certainly couldn’t say no to  _Spiderman_ , Grenn found himself at the Cineplex two towns over, waiting for Pyp to show up.

He had nothing to be nervous about. He and Pyp were friends, and he’d been drunk and Pyp wouldn’t ask him to  _Spiderman_  if he were mad at him. Pyp didn’t hold grudges like that. And Pyp wouldn’t debase  _Spiderman_  with some sort of…some sort of…thing.

Pyp greeted him casually, though Grenn noticed that his ears went a bit red at the sight of him and, oh balls, this was going to be awkward, wasn’t it?

“I’ve heard good things about it,” Pyp said.

“Yeah. Same. Though it did get panned by  _The New York Times_.”

“Since when have you cared what  _The New York Times_  has to say about a superhero movie?”

“I don’t.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

“It’s a badge of honor in my opinion.”

“Exactly.”

It was as if every word coming out of Pyp’s mouth was a challenge—I dare you to remember me, to remember that you kissed me—and every word out of Grenn’s mouth was a different one—I dare you to bring it up. I dare you to have liked it.

Because the hardest part of it all was that—was that—balls, he wanted  Pyp to have liked it. He wanted Pyp to have had a moment of revelation where his long-time friend was suddenly lover-potential.

“Pity they can’t put him in  _The Avengers_ , though,” Pyp said.

“Yeah. Stupid Sony.”

“Stupid Sony. There was so much that they could have done.”

“Honestly—don’t they have any idea about art? Don’t they think about the potential for perfection? Shouldn’t art come first in this?”

“In a Hollywood movie? You must be joking.”

Every single word—every single one—screamed that they had kissed and as they ordered their popcorn and found seats at the back of the theater, all Grenn could think about was the fact that while most of his memories after ten pm that night had been fuzzy, what hadn’t been fuzzy at all was the feeling of Pyp’s lips against his.  No . He wasn’t  going to think about that. He’d fucked it up enough already as he—

“Grenn?”

“Yeah?”

Pyp was looking at him, and he felt the flush he’d been fighting rise up on his face, and fuck fuck fuck fuck Pyp was leaning towards him and—

There they were again, Pyp’s lips against his, warm and sturdy and soft and Grenn was almost too surprised to kiss him back. Almost. He got over that quick enough, bringing his hands up to Pyp’s shoulders because that was probably the safest place for them and holding him there while he opened his mouth and let Pyp’s tongue in.

*

“Will you at least come round for dinner tonight?” Mom asked. In the bustle of the court adjourning for the day, it would have been easier to pretend that she hadn’t heard her mother’s question, that she had been paying too much attention to what Jon was saying to Robb and Aegon and that she had just missed her mother’s words.

But she hadn’t, and the possibility of that kind of got screwed over when she jerked her head up and stared at her mom, standing there in her pantsuit looking as though going to the court every day was no different than going to work—except for the worry lines on her forehead and the frown on her face.

“Please? We miss you,” said mom as Arya very slowly picked up her phone, which had slipped out of her pocket while she’d been sitting there.

“I—” Every fiber of her being was screaming  _‘_ _no—not yet, not till it’s safe, you’re a time bomb and you can’t_ —’  but her mother’s face was full of sad hope, of trying so hard to keep everything together while things were coming apart at the seams. “Yes. I’d like to very much.”

She pretended not to notice the way her mother’s body sagged with relief as she poked Jon in the side and said, “I’m going to be home for dinner tonight, but I’ll be back afterwards, all right?”

*

It was a little thing—the tiniest of things but when she saw the way that Arya leaned forward in the car. It was different than she had sat growing up, legs crossed on the seat so she could sit up a little straighter and see over the top of the driver’s seat. On the way back from the courthouse, Arya was sitting with her legs spread and her elbows on her knees, back straight, and for a moment, Sansa was back in Ohio, her wrists done up in plastic  ties , sitting in the back between Meryn and the Hound. Meryn had been leaning back, his arm thrown over the seatback behind her, staring out the window at the lake as they drove down I-90.

The Hound had been leaning forward though, and she couldn’t see his face at all. Leaning forward, his back straight, his legs apart and brushing against hers, his elbows on his knees.

*

It had been a long time since Ned had felt the need to check on Sansa as she fell asleep.  Over twenty years, in fact.  Sansa had always been a calm sleeper, easy to put to bed.  Whenever he or Cat had said, “All right, love, it’s bed time,” she would scamper up the stairs, put on her pink pajamas and climb into the blankets, waiting for one of them to come and read to her.  Robb had always asked for ten more minutes, he still had trench trauma from forcing Arya and Rickon into bed, and Bran had gone quietly, but had always snuck out at some point, and needed to be checked on to make sure he didn’t go climbing out his window and onto the roof.

Never Sansa, though.  Sansa would listen to her chapter of Harry Potter and then give her dad or mom a kiss, and curl over on her side and sleep easily.  And, best still, she would remain in her bed until Cat woke her up the next morning for breakfast and school.

But Ned checked on her that night.  She had gone to sleep early—earlier than usual, even before dinner, and when he passed her bedroom door, the light was off.  And, even though he was sure she wouldn’t need it, he couldn’t resist letting the door to her childhood bedroom—still covered in the unicorn cutouts she had spent hours slaving over as a child—crack open just enough for him to stick his head around the corner and see her, curled in a ball under her blankets, a book on the ground by her bed. 

She had always been the easy one, the obedient one.  She had also been the one most likely to tell them that everything was fine when it most certainly wasn’t.  And, looking at her, squinting through the darkness, he couldn’t tell if she was lying awake or not.

*

Stannis came home to the smell of chocolate chip cookies and he knew something was wrong.  Selyse hated baking.  She’d baked for all of Shireen’s bakesales and had complained bitterly each time.  He had never asked  _why_  she had hated baking, precisely.  But she had hated it always, even when they had been dating.

But here she was, baking.

“Selyse?” he called. 

“In the kitchen,” she responded, and he made his way to the back of the house.  He saw a plate of cookies on the center of the kitchen table, and Selyse was sitting there, nibbling one forlornly.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her, his eyes on the cookies. 

She looked up at him, and took a deep breath.  “Are you in love with Melisandre?”

Stannis’ jaw clenched, and he felt blood leaving his face, and Selyse stared at him evenly, taking another bite.

*

“I hate him,” Oberyn said.

They were sitting in a Chinese restaurant—just him and Elia and Doran. Lyanna had insisted on having a “sisters-in-law” dinner with Ellaria, whom she saw so rarely, and who knew to where Elia’s and Doran’s children had scattered.

“I think,” Elia said quietly, plucking up a dumpling with a pair of chopsticks, “that you are not alone in that.” She smiled at him. It was amazing how, after all these years, Elia could still almost calm him with a smile. Almost.

“And I suppose rubbing shoulders with him makes it easier to bear?” he asked her.

“Harder, actually,” said Doran. Doran hadn’t even bothered with chopsticks. He had asked the waiter for a fork and was twirling his lo mein around it as if it were spaghetti. “He thinks it’s all behind us.”

Oberyn snorted.

“Yes, well,” Elia said, rolling her eyes. “From his perspective it is.”

“From  everyone’s  perspective, you mean. What’s thirty years?” snapped Oberyn.

“Oberyn,” Doran said quietly, “Do you honestly think we’re not still working on it?”

Oberyn’s nostrils flared, and Doran’s nostrils flared, and even Elia’s did, as though they felt left out. It was something their mother had done, that they had all picked up from her, when she was remembering a grievance.

“He’ll pay?” Oberyn breathed.

“Yes,” said Doran. “Don’t worry. It may be some time coming. But he will.”

“I don’t want to wait. Mother—”

“I think mother would rather we succeed in this situation, no matter how long it took,” said Doran.

“Do you know what he’s planning?” Oberyn demanded of Elia. She nodded slowly. “Well?”

“His beautiful golden twins,” said Doran. “His beautiful golden twins.”

And Oberyn saw it—and smiled.

*

_ Myrcella Baratheon: Please distract me . _

The words flashed across the screen of his phone, and Robb stared at them for a full five minutes before deciding if he wanted even to respond. It wasn’t her fault. Joffrey wasn’t her fault. She and Joffrey had always been different. She’d always been an angel in comparison, and she had looked so miserable the past few days.

_Please distract me._

How though? How could he distract her? And also, was it a good idea for them to even be in touch right now? He had a suspicion that Mom’s lawyers wouldn’t like it.

_Robb Stark: I don’t know how. I wish I did. I don’t know how to distract myself._

He felt bad sending it. He knew it could very well make things worse.

He imagined Myrcella seeing the text and starting to cry, her face scrunching and her green eyes going bright with tears.

_Robb Stark: Have you ever watched Doctor Who?_

Her response was instantaneous.

_Myrcella Baratheon: I have not, is it good?_

_Robb Stark: No idea. I was thinking about watching it now. Want to watch as well and we can text back and forth?_

_Myrcella Baratheon: That sounds perfect._

_*_

She sat on the porch, listening to them argue. Well, not so much argue as listen to her mother shouting at her father, counting years and business trips and drunken gropings from her uncle Robert. How could he, after all these years? Had they meant nothing to him? She was her  _friend_ —had he no decency?

She had known this was coming, but she hadn’t expected—hadn’t expected that it would happen so soon.

On and on and on they went and Shireen just sat there numbly, knowing that they had forgotten she was supposed to be over for dinner, knowing that they had forgotten that she wasn’t just a weapon for attack.  “And  _Shireen_!  How could you do this to  _her_?  She’s our  _daughter_ , Stannis. Are you really so determined to break everything that you’d break her heart  _too_ ?”

She knew that it was over. That family calm was over, that a happy home to have dinner in on a Friday night was over. And she just sat there numbly, listening to it all fall apart.

*

She knew he was in town because she saw his motorbike parked behind the pizza place near Jon’s apartment. She also knew she shouldn’t go seek him out. They hadn’t exactly parted on the best terms.

But Arya was feeling reckless. Days and days of sitting doing nothing  while listening to the horrible things that Joffrey had done…so she told Jon she was going for a walk and made her way downstairs.

She found him in a bar across the street, watching the Yankee game with a beer bottle dangling from between two fingers.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, climbing up onto the empty barstool next to him.

“Watching the Yankees getting creamed by the Orioles. What does it look like I’m doing?”

“You know what I meant,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Why do you think I’m here?” he demanded.

“Tempting fate? Seeing if the cops’ll arrest you too.”

Clegane barked a laugh. “Well, you’re not wrong in that.” He took another swig of his beer.

“They should arrest you.”

“You’re not wrong in that.”

“What can I get you?” The girl behind the bar walked over to Arya and she looked startlingly like Gendry. Arya had never been in this bar. She didn’t go to bars generally. Hell, she didn’t drink generally. But perhaps because the girl behind the bar looked like Gendry, Arya was so thrown that she said, “What he’s having,” and the bartender disappeared and came back with a bottle for Arya. She popped the cap off and left it with her.

“So, you made it home,” he said as she drank down the beer. It was tangy in her mouth, and cheap. But it did the trick, she supposed.

“Yes. I made it home.”

“Happy home, happy family, all glad to have you back.”

“Hmmm,” said Arya, taking another drink.

“That’s good. That’s nice. Having a family that cares,” he said. He took a drink. “Could do a lot worse than that.”

“True enough,” she said. She thought of Jon, who was letting her sleep on his couch, of Bran who sent her daily updates from what he referred to as the “home front”, of Rickon and his extremely obvious crush, of her parents and the warmth in their eyes whenever they saw her, and of Sansa, who had looked so pale and confused lately.

“What’ll you do next?” she asked him.

He looked at her out of the side of his face, and she could only see that old burn scar, his sad grey eyes, the bit of jawbone through his seared flesh.

“I don’t know.”

*

Everyone was on edge—everyone. Sad and nervous and alone and so on edge that Bran could feel it in his teeth. It wasn’t like home—not home the way he remembered it, loud and loving and people moving between rooms just to see one another’s faces. Robb had moved out, Arya was at Jon’s, Sansa closed the door to her bedroom, Rickon spent all his time on the internet chatting with his crush, and his parents—they were trying. It was impossible to see that they weren’t doing all they could to remind each of them that they were here, they were home, they were together again. He assumed that that was hard, though, with everyone on edge, and, if anything, his parents were more on edge than all of them, since they felt everyone’s individual ghosts on top of their own.

This wasn’t what home should be like—it wasn’t at all. This wasn’t what Bran remembered, and it wasn’t what he wanted, and it certainly wasn’t what he would make it be—not if he had the choice, anyway.

So that night, he lay on his bed, and texted Jojen, and thought, and planned.

*

It was the first time that she hadn’t sat between her parents in the courtroom, and somehow, Sansa felt less safe.  It was strange—she was taller than her mother, but having her mother next to her somehow made her quite sure that the world could and would be kept at bay.  But her mother was sitting between her father and Bran, looking pale and tired, and Sansa thought she saw new grey hairs above her temples.  

She sat between her father and Arya today—Arya for the first time in ages.  Her sister’s face was stony, her jaw clenched, her back straight as a board.  Arya was nervous.  Arya was nervous and sitting so taut that she looked like she was a bowstring ready to be released.  And suddenly, everything else didn’t matter—the courtroom, Joff’s sneers, the memories that had been flooding her ever since the trial started.  

Arya was sitting there, tense as could be and no one seemed to worry—everyone seemed to think that Sansa’s stress was more.  And maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t, but that didn’t mean that Arya could be left to….to what? To stew?  To feel alone?

Sansa reached over and took her sister’s hand.  It was warm, and she felt Arya start in surprise next to her and saw her grey eyes flick to Sansa’s.  Sansa squeezed her hand, and the muscles in Arya’s lips relaxed, and she squeezed back.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catelyn, Edmure, Brynden, Ned, Arya, Sansa, Tyrion, Cersei, Jaime, Beric, Thoros, Bran, Jojen, Meera, Missandei, Grey Worm, Grenn, Pyp, Theon, Jeyne, Asha, Jon, Lyanna, Stannis, Melisandre, Sandor, Daenerys, Brandon, Sarella, Oberyn, Willas, Ellaria, Brienne, Edric, Gendry,

Catelyn jerked awake to the ring of the telephone right by her bed and her arm flailed as she reached for it.  It was four thirty in the morning and her first thought—her first panicked thought—was that something had happened to Arya.

"Arya?" she breathed into the phone even as Ned clicked on a light next to her. 

But it wasn’t Arya at all.  It was her sister, sobbing into the phone.  

"Cat—Uncle Brynden," she gulped.

"Lysa, what’s going on?" she murmured. She felt the bed shift and Ned was leaning on her now, his chin resting on her shoulder.  She was glad he was there when Lysa said the next words.

"Cat, Uncle Brynden had a heart attack."

*

He looked so pale. So very pale.  His skin even made his hair look colorful, even though his Tully red was more a white these days.  Catelyn stood with one hand in Lysa’s and another in Edmure’s, doing her best to listen as the doctor explained what was going on.  She heard words like “stabilize” and “normalize” and not much else because it was too early and staring at her uncle’s face…

She remembered when her father had died.  Shen she’d sat there, watching him waste away, growing thinner and thinner in his hospital bed.  Uncle Brynden had been such a source of comfort for her then—when Lysa had been cold and distant and Edmure had been away on a business trip.  But they were all there now, watching as the machine pushed air into his lungs and the green line on the heart monitor darted up and down with a beep.

Edmure was asking questions.  She was glad someone was.  Shew as too tired of it all right now—too tired of everything.

*

Ned had never much liked hospitals.  Maybe it had been waiting for the ICU to pump Robert’s stomach after he’d drunk himself nearly to death, or that time that Brandon had almost strangled himself, or when Benjen had been found half-frozen to death after getting lost on a hike, or the time that Lyanna had almost died giving birth to Jon.  There was something that was the exact opposite of comforting about the fluorescent lights and the pleather chairs of the waiting room.

It was six in the morning, and the sky was grey outside, and he stared at his phone, wanting to text someone, call someone, talk to someone without being sure of who would actually be awake at this hour.  

He hadn’t spoken to anyone since Cat had told him to wait outside while she went into the care unit with Lysa and Edmure.  He wasn’t dead yet, the doctors had said, but he wasn’t stable either.  He’d let her go in on her own—largely because she wasn’t truly on her own.  She had Edmure and Lysa.

But Ned was alone, and—he frowned down at his phone.  There was a green bubble next to Arya’s name in his “Family” group.

 _Ned: You there?_ He half expected her not to be, except…

_Arya: Yeah.  What’s going on?_

_Ned: Your Great-Uncle had a heart attack.  Mom and I are at the hospital._

_Arya: Oh my god.  Is there anything I can do?_

Ned almost laughed.  It was going to be an awful day, and Cat would be a wreck—torn between Sansa’s case and her uncle’s bedside.  And he, god, how he wished that Arya were sitting there with him, and not at Jon’s apartment, typing into her phone.  At least then he wouldn’t feel so completely by himself.

_Ned: Just be sure to check in on your mom, ok?_

_*_

Tyrion wasn’t wholly sure why they were nervous.  Nervousness implied that they didn’t all know what was coming, that things were a mystery, or that maybe—just maybe—the jig wasn’t up quite yet.  It was, to Tyrion’s mind, complete foolishness.  But then again, maybe he just wasn’t blind to the obvious the way that Cersei was.  Or maybe he saw the obvious more clearly than she did.  Or maybe it just wasn’t obvious and he was smarter than he gave himself credit for.  Or maybe they thought that Joff wouldn’t be sentenced very strongly.  That—at least, he supposed, would make sense.

The courtroom was quiet.  Behind him, he heard Jaime breathing.  Jaime breathed loudly when he was nervous.  He also heard Cersei’s nails clicking on the surface of her phone as she typed something quickly.  Joffrey, however—Joffrey was still and silent as if he’d been carved from stone, and Tyrion wondered why he hadn’t just…been that way the whole time.  Why couldn’t he have been a good boy the way that Tommen was?

So they waited—waited and Tyrion wondered how many of them would actually be surprised by the ruling.

*

Maybe it was because she was tired.  Maybe because her thoughts were full of her mother’s face—pale, drawn, the way that Sansa’s had been for the first few months after they’d both come home.  Maybe because it was easier to look away from everything than to focus on the breathing of her brothers and cousin, the heart thudding in her chest.  But she couldn’t look away from Jaime Lannister.

He was sitting there, leaning back on his bench, his ankle resting on his knee and the most curious expression on his face.  His brows were drawn, his lips pinched in a frown, and his green eyes narrowed as he stared at the back of his brother’s head.  

Arya almost forgot to stand when the judge came in, almost forgot where she was because she’d only seen an expression like that once before, only once and only in the mirror and the thought almost made her blood run cold.

*

Beric had seen a lot of people coming in and out of that court room over the years. A lot of people. Big, small, guilty, not guilty, confused, wrongfully accused—you named it, he’d seen it.  

What he didn’t think he’d ever seen before was the sheer hostility between the two sides of the court room, with tension so palpable you could almost feel it in the air.  Hatred, you could say, or fear, or rage, or disgust—there were a lot of possibilities.  And it was all new.

He glanced sideways at Thoros, and for the first time in years, he felt glad that he had a taser at his belt.  He just had the feeling he might need it after the jury delivered the sentence.  

*

What was it about the Lannisters that made it so that they always seemed to get away with everything? Ned glared at Jaime Lannister as he stood, a smile crossing his face.  Because there just  _had_  to be some reason that the jury hadn’t pronounced Joffrey guilty on all counts.  Enough of them—yes.  He would be in jail.  But the sentencing would be minimal.

Ned was sure that Tywin Lannister had something to do with it.  The man was richer than god, and surely he could…Ned didn’t like to think about it.  He didn’t like to think that this man had the capacity to influence the courts just by being him.

Jaime Lannister was smiling, laughing, even, before biting back his smile as his sister rounded on him and Joffrey was escorted out of the court room, and Ned turned his back on them, turned back to Catelyn and Sansa who were sitting there, numbly—both of them just looking so…

Why was it that Lannisters never played by the same rules as everyone else?

*

"Wait, so he got off?"  Meera’s voice was sharp with disgust as she pushed Bran’s chair down Main Street towards the diner.

"Not on everything," Bran said, not even bothering to keep the anger out of his voice.  "I mean, he was definitely convicted. But it’s not a life sentence, which was what we’ve all been expecting."

"Twenty years though," Jojen said as he loped beside the chair.  "That’s nothing to stick your nose up at."

"Except when he gets out early for good behavior.  And you  _know_  he can.  If Tywin Lannister can get him out of a life sentence…” Bran let his voice trail off.  It made him angry just to think about it.

"And there’s nothing we can do?" Meera asked.

"Not about the court case," Bran said glumly.  No—there wasn’t anything they could do.  And if they tried, they’d probably get in some sort of trouble with the law, and if Bran had picked up anything from these past few years, it was that his family wanted to steer clear of courts of law for the rest of their lives.

"What about the other thing?"

Bran looked up at him as Jojen pulled open the door to the diner, and Bran started grinning.

"That—that we get started on right now."

*

She came home to the smell of onions and peppers and curry and smiled to herself as she kicked off her shoes and let her bag drop to the floor just inside the door.  She tugged her earrings out of her ears and deposited them on the hall table and followed her nose into the kitchen.

Grey was standing over the stove, a wooden spoon in hand, humming tunelessly to himself as he pushed the onions around in the pan.  

"Smells delicious," she said, and even as her mouth opened, she felt it begin to water.  

"You’re home early," he replied, glancing over his shoulder and smiling at her.  "I hope you weren’t fired."

She laughed and crossed the kitchen, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her chin on his shoulder, breathing in the scent of dinner mixed with the sweat of his skin.  ”No.  Just a slow day.  So I ducked out.”

He placed the spoon between the burners and turned around resting his forehead against hers.  ”Well, I can’t complain about that, can I?” and he bent his head down to kiss her.

*

It was the worst day that Catelyn had had since she’d woken up to find Sansa gone, since Arya had disappeared without a note, since Bran’s accident.  Everything happened so quickly, unrelenting and horrible and oh—she couldn’t really bear it and wished that she could just go to sleep, just curl up in a ball on the couch until her father came and ran his fingers through her hair and called her his little Cat again.  

But she couldn’t really do that—she couldn’t, because she needed to be strong.  Why was it that she always had to be strong?  Why was that?  Why couldn’t this have been spread away?  Why had it happened at all?  Arya out of the house and hurting, Sansa and the trial, Bran and the surly expressions on his face lately, and she had to be strong for them.  But being strong for them meant she couldn’t let her own pain wash over her as she looked through the hospital window at her Uncle, who was breathing—thank god—and pale.  

Arya was sitting with him while Catelyn listened to doctors yet again.  Arya was sitting with him, watching him, and such a curious expression on her face that Catelyn almost couldn’t hear the words that the Doctors were telling her, that things were looking promising, though the danger had not yet passed.  

It just had to be today, didn’t it?  It just had to…

She closed her eyes and shut out the world for a moment, knowing that when she opened them again, she would be strong.

*

She had never actually watched anyone being close to death like this.  She’d seen people about to die with fear in their eyes, and people who were dead, but this—this seemed almost peaceful. Peaceful in a way that nothing else seemed to be, anyway.  

She wondered what it was like to be at peace.  She felt like she hadn’t been—not in ages, and that every moment of every day was a constant struggle, a constant reminder of thing she’d done and things she’d felt—even something as innocuous as watching Jaime Lannister’s face during the trial and realizing that his expression mirrored her own right as she’d decided to go off and have an adventure, to leave home and throw herself at the world and when she’d done that, she’d realized that all she wanted to do was to come home, even if coming home wasn’t actually coming home, because coming home didn’t mean retreating into childhood.

He looked so peaceful, even though there were plastic tubes under his nose and so many needles poking through his skin.

She glanced at the window.  Her mother’s jaw was set, and her arms were crossed around her middle and she looked the way that Arya felt sometimes—like nothing was right or would be right.  And Arya was in the process of getting up and going to her when she heard a noise so different from the beeping of the heart monitor.

She turned and stared at her great uncle, his eyes beginning to open and she saw clear blue and confusion and her heart leaped to her throat in what it took her a moment to recognize was pure joy.

*

"It’s a good sign—that he woke up, then," Ned said, pouring tea into Catelyn’s mug, then into Arya’s.  Ordinarily, Catelyn would have complained.  If anything, it was too hot for tea, or maybe that she needed something stronger.  But she watched as the chamomile leaves swirled around in her mug, breathing in the aroma of the infusion and she felt calmer, somehow.

"Well, they say so," she said.  The mug was warm in her hands,  "I mean, they also said that heart attacks like that can have after shocks, so it might not…"

"Cat, you’re trying not to get your hopes up," said Ned, looking at her gently.  She loved his eyes.  She loved them, always so gentle, so loving.  She wished that Arya’s eyes weren’t so distant right now.  She wished that Arya looked gentle and sturdy the way that Ned did, but Arya looked as though she was lost too much in her own thoughts to even hear them.

"And what if I get my hopes up and he dies?" she asked, her voice cracking.

"I think you look for excuses to make yourself upset, or stressed," he replied, his eyebrow twitching.  "Your worrying won’t change anything—it only makes you more upset."

"It doesn’t," Catelyn said automatically, but even as she did, she felt her stomach clench, because she knew he was right.  and, upon realizing it, she felt her shoulders sag.  "It’s hard to just accept that," she said quietly, lifting her tea to her mouth.  "It’s hard to—" she didn’t know what.  But Arya, who had been silent as a mouse, stirred.

"It’s hard to accept that life goes on, whether it goes the way you want it to or not."  Her voice was quiet, small—and Cat had never heard it that way before.  And when she looked at Arya, she saw that her eyes were focused on her own cup of tea, which she was spinning between her fingers.

*

Right, so they had kissed. They’d kissed a lot, actually. They’d barely watched the movie at all and spent most of it necking, and Pyp had great big splotches of color on his neck from when Grenn had sucked on it for what felt like seconds but was really closer to twenty minutes.  

They’d kissed for hours, and then they’d gone and gotten dinner together and Grenn’s hand had rested on his leg for most of it, and they hadn’t really talked about anything—just light things, and Pyp kept staring at Grenn’s Adam’s apple, the way it bobbed when he swallowed his coke, and the way he blushed bright red when he caught Pyp looking.

And then he hadn’t called.  Grenn hadn’t called at all, and Pyp hadn’t called, because was Pyp supposed to call?  What was this whole thing?  Were they friends, because Pyp certainly didn’t let friends give him hickies when they were supposed to be watching  _Spiderman_.  Pyp wasn’t sure he wanted to just be friends—not when he’d felt so elated for a moment, thinking that this could be “it”.  

But Grenn hadn’t called.  He hadn’t even texted.  And Pyp didn’t know what to do.

*

He got out of the car and hobbled up the walkway to the apartment building, grocery bags in hand, stooping slightly because it helped him balance better.  He fucking missed those toes. 

People always looked sadly at his hands, made cooing sounds of sympathy and offered to carry things for him.  And that was good if them—it was.  But he was already typing near as quickly as he had before, his remaining fingers accommodating for the ghostly missing ones.  But he’d be stooping and off balance for the rest of his life because of the toes.  And there wasn’t anything he could do about it except to keep going.

But fuck, it was tiring to keep going sometimes.

*

He hadn’t gone home—well, it wasn’t really home anymore was it?—in over a week now, not since Selyse had made him pack a bag and kicked him out.  He hadn’t heard anything from her, and hadn’t heard a peep out of Shireen.  He had gotten a note from Davos, saying that he’d heard and he was sorry things had ended so catastrophically, but Stannis hadn’t even replied.  

He wouldn’t use the word catastrophically.  It wasn’t a catastrophe.  He and Selyse had been drifting apart for years.  It was true, the  _nature_  of it might have been a catastrophe, but the actual ending of the thing?  It almost felt a relief.

Besides—it was nice not to have to go home to that damned soft and lumpy bed anymore.  Mel’s bed was hard, and good for his back.

*

"Hello my sunshine."  Sarella smiled into the phone.

"I didn’t know you were stateside," Sarellla exclaimed happily.  It wasn’t every day that dad called.

"Well, if you checked your fucking email every now and then, you’d know.  How’s the dissertation coming along?"

Sarella sighed.  It wasn’t coming along very well, but telling dad that was not something Sarella was willing to admit to.  ”It’s…dissertationy,” Sarella said.

"You sound like you’re squirming."

"I’m not squirming."

"Are you sure? Because it sounds like it."

"I’m quite sure.  I would definitely know if I were squirming."

Dad laughed into the phone.  ”They’re about to call our gate.  Are you coming over with your sisters at Christmas?”

Sarella shrugged, then remembered dad couldn’t see it and said, “I think so?  Maybe.  I’m still figuring it out.”

"Well, figure it out soon before ticket prices go through the roof."

"I will.  Miss you."

"Miss you too.  Later baber."

*

"He’s all right then?" Bran’s voice was bright—brighter than Catelyn had heard it in what felt like years, so bright that she paused to stare at him.

"He’s being released from the hospital, at least," she said.  "I don’t know if all right is—"

"Cat," Ned said, and she felt him nudging her under the table.  His expression was on the playful end of stern and she felt something inside her release and she wanted to laugh but she wasn’t even sure she still knew how to.  So instead she smiled, and it felt like cracking something stiff on her face, but the more she smiled, the more Bran smiled and the more Ned smiled and how could she stop smiling when they were smiling at her, smiling at her smiling?  And it was such a ridiculous thought that laughter bubbled up from her chest and filled the room with the sound of simple relief.

*

"What about Mom, though?" Arya asked, glancing over at the couch where their mother was flicking through a magazine.  Bran followed her gaze.  She still looked pale, and her jaw was still tight, and there were definitely still worry lines across her brow, but he had a mission, and he refused to be distracted from it.

"Mom’ll be fine.  I think she just needs some down time.  She spends so much time worrying about us all," he murmured to her.  Arya raised her eyebrows and he backtracked quickly.  "Look—you need your time away from us to handle your stuff…Mom does too.  She just can’t go and crash on Jon’s couch."

That did the trick and Arya bit her lip.  ”She  _does_  get upset whenever I leave, though,” Arya said.  ”Even if I say I’ll be back for dinner.”

"Just say you’re going on a walk, then.  You haven’t had good Aunt Lyanna time in ages.  And don’t even say that the birthday party counted because we all know that it didn’t.  Go.  Have your playtime with the Smartells and—"

"You know Aunt Lyanna hates that fucking splice."

"She shouldn’t have come up with it then," grinned Bran.

He saw Arya glance down at her phone, undoubtedly texting Jon to say she was going after all, and he suppressed a smile, and did his best not to let the arrogant words,  _God, I’m so good at what I do_ , fill his head.

*

She wished it weren’t so easy—really wished it.

Maybe it was because she was a romantic at heart, or maybe it was because sometimes Robb blew hot and cold, depending on what was going on between their families, but she wished, wished,  _wished_  that she could just…

Why was Myrcella disappointed that his cousin had come over?  His cousin wasn’t even in the same damn room, and Jon had been dragged into helping Aegon’s mom adjust paintings in the bedroom because Aegon had a friend over.  And she was the friend.  And there was activity in the house, laughter from all around, laughter from both of them, and it shouldn’t be this easy—shouldn’t be this comfortable.

Why was it so much easier to be comfortable with Aegon than with Robb?

Why was it just as easy to find herself staring at his lips and wondering what they tasted like?

*

"What’s that look on your face?" Aunt Lyanna asked.

Arya shrugged and hitched a smile.  ”It’s just been a tiring few days, is all.”

Aunt Lyanna made a sound of recognition.  ”How’s your great uncle?”

"Good.  Out of the hospital."

"Your mom must be relieved." 

"Yeah.  I think she is.  I don’t think she could have taken too much more of that," smiled Arya.  It’s not a full smile.  And she sees her aunt’s eyes narrow.

"You keep doing that," Aunt Lyanna said quietly.

Arya did her best to keep her voice neutral.  ”Doing what?”

"You keep making it look like you’re doing what you should be doing, thinking what you should be thinking.  But your face isn’t cooperating.  Which means it’s all a show, and I can see it.  So spit it out."  

Arya gaped at her.  Gaped, because she had no idea how to respond to this.

"Is this about going home?  How you don’t want to?" Aunt Lyanna asked.  

"I—" she began, not even sure what to say.  Aunt Lyanna raised her eyebrows at her and crossed her arms, waiting.  "I—it’s complicated.  I can’t go home."

"Can’t?  Is there some sort of invisible wall preventing you?" she demanded.

She’d remembered one time when she’d been little, when her father had said that once Lyanna had an idea, she dug her teeth in and didn’t let go—like a pit bull.  Arya had liked that, and had done her best to adopt it.  But even when she tried, she realized it was nothing like this.  Her gaze was never quite this steely, her jaw never quite so set.  

"No.  It’s just—it’s not safe.  I’m not safe.  It’s not safe for me to be near them."  The words seemed to hang in the air between them, and Arya wished she could suck them back inside her.

Aunt Lyanna looked her dead in the eye with an expression so hard that Arya felt scared because she  _knew_  that expression—she’d seen it in the mirror too many times.  ”Hurting yourself to keep others you love from hurting is toxic. The sentiment is good; the pattern it creates is not.  Don’t you fucking dare do that to yourself, Arya Stark.”

*

The house was perfectly still.  Perfectly and blissfully still, and for the first time in what felt like ages, Ned didn’t care where any of his kids were.  They were fine.  He was sure of that.  What mattered was that he and Cat were alone, and that Cat looked up at him warmly, tiredly, as he settled down on the couch next to her and plucked her magazine from her hands.

"I was reading that," she chided gently. 

"I bet you anything you’ll remember where you were," he replied, keeping it open to the page, but settling it on the coffee table.  She leaned against him, tucking herself into the crook of his arm and sighing, and Ned just knew that as hard as the summer had been, they’d pulled through it, and the only direction that things could go from here was up.

*

It had been so long since they’d had sex on the couch, their clothes still half on and hushing one another because the windows were open and what if one of the neighbors  _heard_  them? It wasn’t something they could do very often—not with five children in and out all the time without any notice.  The last time had probably been before Arya was born, when Robb was still young enough that…well…Robb had never been easy to put to bed.  

It didn’t matter—it didn’t matter at all.  The only thing that mattered was Ned inside her and both of them sweating from the late August humidity, and oh,  _god_  she’d needed this, needed her heart pounding in her chest, Ned’s lips at her neck and the brief moments of laughter when one of them nearly toppled off the couch and onto the floor.  It was like being young again—like being new, like nothing bad had happened because nothing in the world  _could_  be bad with Ned there with her, his fingers twining through her hair as he murmured her name and his cock twitched inside her.  Nothing was wrong so long as she had Ned.

*

She drifted off to sleep in his arms and he was so glad she did because she had been a complete wreck for such a long time.  As calm as she’d seemed before, it was nothing to now—now with the blush of sex fading from her cheeks and the sheen of sweat slowly drying away as she breathed into his chest and sighed and shifted her hips slightly, trying to get comfortable on the couch.

The couch was much too small for the both of them—good and deep and soft for watching television, but for a good snuggle after sex…less so.  

If he’d been a younger man—a stronger one, Ned would have picked her up and carried her up the stairs to their bed, tucked her in gently and kissed her.  But he knew that trying to do that would probably cause a back spasm, and besides, he wasn’t entirely sure he was coordinated enough to get her upstairs without hitting her head on something.  So instead, he just lay there on his side, curled around her, tucking both of them back into their clothes in case he drifted off and one of the kids came home, and watching the way the hair that had fallen over her face fluttered as she breathed.

*

"That is it?" Aunt Cat was staring at Arya’s dufflebag, and the rolling suitcase that she had lugged out of the back of Jon’s car.

"Yeah?" Arya said blankly.  "What—should there be more?  I didn’t take that much, did I?" She glanced over her shoulder at him, and Jon grinned.

"No—you didn’t bring much.  You just left it sprawled all over my living room."

Arya elbowed him and he ruffled her hair as she made her way up the walkway towards the house.  When she was just inside, Aunt Cat turned to him.

"Thank you—for…for looking after her," she said quietly.  

Jon smiled.  ”Yeah.  No problem.”

"And—" she took a deep breath, and Jon was suddenly struck by how much tension she could keep in her neck because he saw it all relax at once.  "Are you sure you won’t stay for dinner?"

"I would, but I need to go take a friend’s head out of his ass," Jon said.

Aunt Cat laughed.  ”Good luck with that, then!”

"Oh boy, am I going to need it."

*

"I can only assume Father did something," Tyrion said, and Cersei glared at him.

"What makes you say that?"

"Cersei, your son was as guilty as guilty could be of every charge laid at his feet.  Only the willfully ignorant couldn’t see that."  

She wished he’d been strangled at birth sometimes.  What Jaime liked about him… “No thanks to you and your work.  Weren’t you trying to get him off?”

"I was  _trying_  to reduce the sentence.  Which I might have done.  But I think Father is a more likely candidate for that.  So…is he getting all of Joff’s cronies of then?”

Cersei smirked as she raised her coffee to her lips.  ”No.  Just Joff.  Fuck the others for letting him get caught.”

*

He left town—just got on his motorcycle and left because what the fuck else could he do?  If he stuck around here, he’d probably end up arrested, just like Arya had said.  He’d heard rumors that Cersei Lannister was on the warpath because her son hadn’t gotten off, and he did not doubt for a second that her ire would rain down heavy on him, if she ever saw him.  Hell, she’d probably phone him into the cops to herself, with glee.

So he left.  He got on his motorcycle and left, and he didn’t even see her—not once, even though Brienne had thought it would do him good to.  But if he’d learned anything in his life, it was that he was remarkably shitty at doing things that were good for him.

*

Dany had lost track of how long she’d been staying with her mother, of how long it had been since she’d actually gone home to her apartment.  But when things stopped hurting quite so much, she took the 6 to the 4 to the L and found herself in Williamsburg, unlocking the front door and finding a ton of junk mail and some notes from Daario.

She didn’t even bother looking at them—she just dumped them in the trash can and went into the kitchen.  Her refrigerator smelled of rotten food and she set herself to cleaning it, doing her best to ignore the stench, because if she thought about it too hard it would make her sick.

And as she cleaned, she heard her phone buzz again, and saw Daario’s face on the screen, grinning at her with his golden tooth.

She really would have been better off getting a dog, wouldn’t she?

*

"Brandon?" He heard the surprise in her voice—the same surprise he’d heard for years.  

“‘Lo, Barb,” he mumbled into the phone.

"Are you drunk?"

"Yes."

"Brandon—we’ve talked about this."  She was hissing into the phone.  He imagined her wearing that black lacy thing she’d worn the first time they’d had sex.  Fuck she’d been hot then. 

"I know.  Just wanted to hear your voice," he said.

She sighed.  ”It’s past midnight.”

"So?  That late for you now, Barb?"

She snorted.  ”You wish.  Where are you?”

"I’m in Albany.  I’m catching a bus to fuck knows where."

"Well, on your way to fuck knows where, stop by Cleveland ok?  I’ll make it worth your while."

"Worth my—hang on, this is a trick of some sort."

"You’re drunk—I’m drunk—I don’t know what it is."

That caught in his head.  ”Why are you drunk?”

"My husband died six months ago, Brandon.  I’ve been drunk ever since."

Brandon felt his back straighten against the bench.  ”Oh?”

"Yeah.  Come to Cleveland."

*

Maybe it was that Jaime hadn’t had enough to drink the day before, but his head was splitting open as though someone had taken an axe and was slowly pressing down on his skull, right down the center, cracking bone away, not in one fell swoop, but little by little.

It wasn’t a precisely pleasant experience.  

And, compounded with Cersei, sitting on his couch and ranting about Tyrion, about Robert, about Meryn Trant, about the United States Judicial System, about the heat, about summer, about the cost of Tommen’s text books, Jaime was finding it hard to keep it from feeling as though his head was not just splitting apart by an axe, but also by some sort of whistle coming in through his ears and pushing out through his skull.

And when Cersei glared at him, for not listening, or not speaking—he couldn’t tell, he felt as though something cracked, because when she glared at him, suddenly something about her seemed less beautiful

*

_Jon: Look—if you’re that pissed at him, get your head out of your ass and call him. I’m tired of being a go between, ok? This is not my job._

That was how Grenn knew he’d waited too long.  Also how he knew he shouldn’t have told Jon anything, but he was sure that Pyp had told Sam, so who else could he have?  He knew enough to know that Edd was not trustworthy with knowledge of his love life. _  
_

Yeah—he should have called.  He should have. But fuck—so should _Pyp_ have.  Pyp was the one who’d…hadn’t he made it clear enough?  He’d gone and kissed him in the first place.  And sure, Pyp had invited him to the movie but, it was his  _crush_  to begin with.  He’d made  _that_ much abundantly clear when he’d kissed him while shitfaced.

Why did he always have to be the one?  Couldn’t he get a little bit if equality?  He’d had this fucking crush for years—pining away.  Maybe it would be nice to feel equally wanted.

Or, maybe Jon was right and he needed to get his head out of his ass.

So he took a deep breath and called, and Pyp picked up on the third ring.

"You moron," he said angrily.

"Yeah—all right."

"You fucking moron."

"I know."

*

She slept in footie pajamas these days because keeping her skin covered while she slept kept her calm.  And so long as they kept the air conditioning on, what did it matter that she was coated in flannel as she slept, because the room was chilly enough for it to be winter.

On most nights, she and Theon slept with a body pillow between them—like some sort of barrier that would keep their night terrors separate, in case they tossed and turned—or worse—cuddled up against one another in their sleep.  Jeyne imagined that most people would have found that weird, or sad.  But it wasn’t—not really.  Because there were mornings where she woke up to find herself pressed against the body pillow, and it would feel sturdier and warmer than usual, and when she poked her head up, she would see Theon curled up against it too, his face perfectly at rest.  They both slept better with that pillow between them, and on days when they slept well, things were easier.

But waking up to find that they’d nuzzled up against it wasn’t her absolute favorite.  Her favorite were the nights when she woke up to find Theon’s arm thrown over the barrier and his hand resting just inches from her flannel pajamas.  Because even if he wasn’t not touching her in her sleep, she knew he was there with her.  And she always waited until he was awake to press a kiss to his palm.

*

There ws only one light on in their apartment when they arrived back from Charles de Gaulle, tired, jet-lagged and, in Oberyn’s case, grumpy. He had not particularly enjoyed the food on American Airlines, and wished he’d been more specific with the travel agent that AirFrance was the only acceptable airline. They hadn’t even had good wine.

Ellaria went into the living room to deposit the gifts that Doran had sent over for the girls and listen to voice mails before she followed Oberyn into the bedroom.

Willas was up, and reading, and naked in their bed.  She would have believed he hadn’t been planning anything if there wasn’t a smile twitching at the corner of his lips while he determinedly ignored Oberyn, who had just stepped out of the shower with a towel around his waist.

"Did you think I’d be too tired after the trip?" Oberyn asked him as Ellaria grabbed her own towel and went into the bathroom.  She heard Willas say, "God no.  But be polite and wait for Ellaria, will you?" as she turned on the water.

*

She liked having him there to come home to. She liked that he offered to pay for dinner, even though he really shouldn’t be spending money on anything because he’d need a good lawyer, knowing Selyse as she did. She liked that they read in silence before turning off the lights and going to sleep—or leaving the lights on so that they could watch their shadows on the wall as they made love.

It was a sinful thing, she knew.  It was also a cruel thing, to have captivated the husband of her friend.  But at this point, she didn’t know what she believed anymore—except that Stannis had brought purpose to her life somehow, in some way that it felt like nothing else had.

Selyse hadn’t said a word to her since she had kicked Stannis out.  Not one.  And she had never intended to harm her friend.  But she had, hadn’t she.  And yet not even that knowledge could have broken the pleasure she felt waking up to him every day, knowing that he was hers and nothing stood in the way.

They said the road to hell was paved with good intentions.  She was a sinner, and she’d intended well at one point, but not even the fires of damnation could scare her away from doing what she wanted anymore.

*

"I feel a little bit like I’m a mother on a play-date." Theon’s sister grinned at him as they watched Theon and Robb walk around the park.  Robb had his arm tucked through Theon’s, helping him as he hobbled along, and Jon smiled.

He’d never been as close to Theon as Robb had been, but Robb had insisted he come along.  It had been a long time since Theon had had the energy to see any of them.  Jon would be welcome.

But if there was one thing that Jon and Theon had always understood about one another, it was that they preferred Robb’s company to their own, and Theon had smiled gratefully—his new teeth so bright in his mouth—when he’d said he’d stay behind and keep Theon’s sister company.

"Well, knowing both of them…they require parental supervision," Jon said dryly.

She snorted.  ”More than you’ll ever know.”  Her eyes went distant for a moment and she looked out over the grass to her brother.  ”God, I’m proud of him.”

"He’s kind of unbelievable," Jon agreed.  And it was true.  Theon was laughing, his voice carrying across the park, and Robb was grinning at him.

*

Dany was on a purge. She was going through every inch of her apartment and de-Daario-ing it.  She threw out the panties he’d told her she looked hot in, the hairbrush that he’d borrowed and which sometimes made her hair a bit blue because his dye had rubbed off on it, his snakeskin boots—which she was actually tempted to keep because they fit her and were actually very nice.

And with each bag of his junk that she put out on the street, her heart grew both lighter and heavier all at once.  Lighter for the obvious reason—lighter because she knew it now, she  _knew_  why she had this pattern, and she wasn’t letting herself feel like shit anymore.  She was turning over a new leaf.  But heavier too, because with every cd that she dumped into a black plastic bag, with every lighter of his that she found in some odd corner, she remembered that they’d had  _fun_  and that even as she cut him out of her life, there was this gross fear filling her heart that she was cutting fun out as well.

And when she thought about that, she focused on the lighter side—the self-aware side.  Because she’d been too paralyzed by fear for too much of her life, and it had sent her into shitty patterns and broken relationships and she wasn’t going to be that broken little girl anymore.  

Daario had once made her feel less broken.  Less alone after Drogo died.  But in the end, he hadn’t really known her at all.  And hadn’t cared about knowing her—just about fucking her.  And you know what?  She was done with that.

*

Sansa’s phone buzzed and she reached across her bed to grab it and see who had sent her a message.

_Bran: Since I can’t come upstairs to you, will you come down to me, and consider it the equivalent of me knocking on your door to keep you company?_

Sansa smiled and rolled herself off her bed, descending the stairs and going into Bran’s room.  He was sitting in his bed, his laptop on his lap, and there were dark circles under his eyes.

"What’re these from?" she asked, pointing to them.

"Oh, lots of thoughts that keep me up nights," he said, shrugging and smiling.

"Good thoughts?"

"For the most part."

"Glad one of us has them," she said sighing.  She flopped onto his bed, letting her neck arch over the edge on the side away from the door, stretching it as he head dangled.

"The good thoughts’ll come back," Bran said, reaching over and running gripping her shoulder.

"People keep saying that, but they haven’t yet," Sansa muttered.

"Well, you can’t force them.  And besides, things have only just taken shape.  Give yourself some time to get past the trial."

Sansa didn’t say anything.  She just stared at a crack in the ceiling and wondered how it was that Bran was always just exactly what she needed.

*

It had been a long time since Sansa had laughed. A long time since Arya had laughed. And an even longer time since they had both laughed at the same time. Bran rolled his eyes.

"It’s not actually as funny as you think it is, you know," he muttered, glaring at them.

But neither of them could respond.  Arya, indeed, had slid off the couch and was rolling around on the floor, clutching her belly, her face red and screwed up with laughter.  Sansa’s head was in her hands and she was shaking and gasping for air.

"I don’t know why I bother talking to either of you," he muttered, but neither of them were looking at him, and they couldn’t see him smiling, and he was so close he could almost feel it.

*

"Wait, repeat that?" Brienne asked, looking up from her notepad.  Sansa blinked at her.

"Repeat what?" she asked.

"You said that Joffrey’s uncle wouldn’t stop staring at you?"

"Why is that important?" Sansa asked blankly.  

"I don’t know.  You’re the one who brought it up," said Brienne.  "You tell me."

Sansa grimaced, and looked down at her hands.  ”It’s—I don’t know.  It’s the dumbest thing.  And it’s probably not true,” she said.

"What’s not true?" Brienne asked.

"Well…I don’t know.  Joffrey’s always looked more like his uncle than his dad.  But that’s…I don’t know.  It’s stupid.  Jon looks more like my dad than his.  So that happens sometimes."

"I am sensing a but in there," Brienne prompted.

"Well…It’s more that…I don’t know.  Joffrey’s blonde and has green eyes, and I am definitely not a biology person, but isn’t there something about dominant and recessive traits…and…Nevermind.  It’s stupid.  I’m stupid."

"You’re not stupid," said Brienne emphatically.  Sansa still did that—still called herself stupid whenever she was backing away from her instinct.  Brienne made a note of it on her pad.

"No, I’m not," Sansa said placatingly, "but I mean—come on.  Joffrey’s not…he can’t be his uncle’s son.  That’s  _ridiculous_.”

"Well, it’s not if you think it might be the case," Brienne replied, and she wondered if it could possibly be true, that Joffrey was Jaime Lannister’s son.

*

She was sitting next to him at the bus stop and she was without a doubt the most beautiful girl Ned had ever seen, with auburn waves that she had brushed back and flung over her shoulder.  She was bent over, reading a book—some sort of romance novel, if he could judge from the pink of the cover.  Allyria liked romance novels, and kept telling he should read them if he wanted to learn what good sex was.  He’d been tempted to last summer when he’d been home for an internship, but didn’t think he could pull that off here.  For one thing, he didn’t have the time, and for another, his housemates would piss themselves laughing.

He wondered if it was any good.  It had to be, to put that smile on her lips.  Did she know she was smiling?  Or was it subconscious, some small pleasure on the page.

He wondered if she was a student in town, or if she was a resident.  He wondered what her name was, how old she was, if she had a boyfriend.  And before he could stop himself, he opened his mouth to ask her.

*

She wasn’t entirely sure if Bran was  _actually_  asleep, or if Bran was pretending to be asleep when Arya drifted into his room that evening.  Bran was  _usually_  awake at nights, calling up the Reeds and sneaking out of the house the way he’d always done when he was a child.  Somehow, Jojen had figured out how to get him out through the window, which seemed to be enough to make Bran feel like he was actually sneaking out, even though he was old enough that he could use the front door without their parents getting into a thing.

It was frustrating—she’d expected to have him to talk to as she settled back into the house, the quiet routine of family.  She had certainly expected to have him to escape to when she was pretty sure her parents were in the process of getting it on and she really didn’t want to listen to that.  Not that she wasn’t pleased—she was glad that they still had that, and wanted them never to lose it; she just never wanted to hear it ever in her life ever.

She sighed and went into the living room, throwing herself onto the couch.  She could call Jon, obviously, but she felt like he’d probably just roll his eyes at her and tell her to enjoy being home.  Sansa was out on a date with the boy she’d met a the bus stop, and had blushed furiously when she’d mentioned it.  Robb was working, Rickon was who knew where, and…

The answer came to her so quickly that she almost laughed as she drew up his contact information on her phone and called him.

*

There wasn’t a way in the world Gendry was actually paying attention to the movie—not a way at all.  It was the shortest movie in the world—one that Tom had sent him because he was obsessed with one of the actors in it, and it was short and weird and he would probably have to come up with another movie for them to watch afterwards, but he couldn’t think about any of that now—not even Erich taking of his shirt while Wolfgang watched—because why would he pay attention to that while Arya was sitting next to him on the couch. 

She looked, for the first time since she’d gotten back, as though everything was normal again. Her eyebrows were slightly raised as she watched Wolfgang, and there was a bemused expression on her face, and Gendry  _knew_  he should have saved this movie for later and they should have watched  _Lost_  again.   _Lost_  had like a million seasons, and he had seen them all twelve times.  He wouldn’t have had to pay attention, and he wouldn’t have felt the need to rewatch anything because hew as watching Arya and…

She glanced up at him, clearly planning to share a guffaw, but he saw her expression falter in confusion.

*

Gendry looked away, blushing furiously and she felt her stomach twist into eight or nine—maybe ten—knots.  He’d been watching her.  That hadn’t surprised her.  Everyone was watching her lately.  Everyone was worried.  But he hadn’t been watching her like that, he’d been watching her  _like that_ and why was he doing that—he didn’t…

But of course he did.

Of  _course_  he did. She could have laughed because obviously—how could she have been that much of an idiot? 

And suddenly, she found herself staring at Wolfgang, watching him as closely as she could, wishing that she didn’t notice how Gendry was shifting away from her slightly, so that they weren’t touching anymore, wishing she didn’t notice that she felt cold where he wasn’t anymore, wishing she didn’t notice how nice he smelled, like soap and something else that he’d always smelled like, even when they’d been younger, and why did that scent make her happy?  Why did she—

She looked back at Wolfgang and—oh  _god_  why were she and Gendry watching an extended sex scene together?  Why were they, when—when—

She looked back over at him, and saw him watching her again, and this time, he didn’t look away.  This time, he leaned in and kissed her.

*

The movie was over, but that didn’t matter because Arya’s hands were in his hair and she was tugging him closer to her, her tongue in his mouth and it was all he could do not to groan and collapse onto her and just kiss her.  God, she tasted good—like cinnamon maybe, or apples, or fuck it he wasn’t thinking of finding words for what she tasted like, he was focusing on the way her tongue was running along his, rubbing it, massaging it, the way her hands had slipped from his hands to his chest and she’s holding onto his pecs and—fuck.

He broke the kiss and looked at her, aware of how heavy he was breathing, of how heavy she was breathing, of the silence in the room except for them and their two hearts beating together as one.  She didn’t say anything, she just nodded at him, and kissed him again, and he held her as tightly as he could, slipping his hands up the bottom of her shirt and her skin was so hot, and he could feel every single one of her vertebra as his hands climbed up her spine.

She was straddling him now, her feet tucked under his knees—he didn’t know how that had happened, but there she was, sitting on top of him in he blue jeans and he was hard and she was ribbing herself along his cock as she kissed him and god that felt good, felt perfect, and he had her shirt off before he was even aware his hands were moving, and he was fiddling with the clasp of her bra behind her back.

And she sat there, a moment, looking down at him, naked from the waist up and she looked like some triumphant queen or something, her eyes dark and hungry. 

“Arya?”

“I thought we established this,” she said, nodding again. 

And he reached up and cupped her breasts and god the were so soft.  Ara made a gutteral moan above him, her head falling back, eyes closed, and for a moment, Gendry thought he might come.

*

He was incredibly buff.  It was the first thing she noticed as he extracted himself from between her legs to go and fetch a condom.  She watched him crossing the room, shirtless and tall and they were really going to fuck, weren’t they?  Really going to.

She fiddled with the button of her jeans, and removed them and her underwear in one go, then got off the couch to stand by his bedroom door.  He emerged from the bathroom and his eyes widened slightly and she jerked her head towards his bed and he followed her there.  She moved across it, lying down, stretching herself out lazily as she watched him remove his pants and underwear, watched his cock bob as he extracted his legs from them, and sat down to roll the condom on.

He crawled over to her, kissing her neck, her collarbone, her breastbone, her breasts then back up to her neck and her lips and she reached down between them to run her fingers over his cock as she took hold of him and guided him inside her, feeling herself stretch around him, as they both gasped and groaned at the same time.

*

“Good morning there, sunshine,” said Rickon dryly when Arya tried to slip into the house unnoticed.  It was four in the afternoon, and Robb looked up from his phone and stared at her.

“Arya—what happened to your neck?”

“Shit,” she muttered, her hands flying to the exact spot where bruises had obviously been sucked into her skin.

“Need some cover up?” Sansa asked, reaching for her purse, a wolfish grin on her face.

“Shut up,” she muttered, going for the stairs.

“Now why would we do that?” asked Rickon.

Bran rolled himself out of his room, blocking the staircase and Arya glared at him.  He smiled up at her.  “Have a good time?” he asked and his eyes twinkled at her.

“Yeah.  I did, now can I get past?”

Laughter followed her up the stairs, and when she saw herself in her bedroom mirror, it was just  _obvious_  how well and truly fucked she looked.  And she couldn’t really let herself be mad.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to end this 'verse here. I am aware there may be plotholes, but that's just how the cookie crumbled. Hope you enjoyed anyway!


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